NBC’s Songland contest to ‘search’ for hit tunesmiths

Hunt joins ‘World on Fire’

LOS ANGELES, Oct 10, (Agencies): Songwriters get the spotlight in a new NBC talent contest.

The network said Tuesday that its 11-episode series, “Songland,” will give undiscovered songwriters the chance to create a hit.

In each episode, five contestants will work with music producers and a recording artiste to perfect their tunes.

One winner per episode will have his or her song released as the artiste’s next single, NBC said.

The first episode includes Ryan Tedder of OneRepublic, songwriter Ester Dean, country singer-songwriter Shane McAnally. Charlie Puth is the recording artiste.

Eurythmics co-founder Dave Stewart and Maroon 5’s Adam Levine are among the executive producers of “Songland.”

Would-be contestants will be able to apply at an upcoming website, NBC said.

A series debut date wasn’t announced.

Barack and Michelle Obama’s Netflix production deal may see the former first couple become the streaming service’s next stars.

“I hope so,” said Netflix chief content officer Ted Sarandos when asked whether the Obamas would appear on camera in any of the projects they’re developing for the streaming giant.

The Obamas in May signed a deal with Netflix to produce original content for the streaming service. Sarandos indicated on Tuesday that the form that content will take is beginning to become clear.

“They have their eyes on film and television, fiction and non-fiction,” Sarandos said. “They want to do programming, storytelling that fits in with what they did during the presidency, obviously.” He said that among the topics the Obamas may cover are sports, lifestyle, and nutrition – but not politics. “It’s going to be great storytelling.”

Sarandos was joined onstage by Lisa Nishimura, Netflix’s head of documentary and comedy programming, and Maclain Way and Chapman Way, creators of the six-and-a-halfhour documentary series “Wild Wild Country,” about the Rajneeshpuram community, which the service released earlier this year.

Maclain Way drew a surprised reaction from the crowd at Vanity Fair’s New Establishment Summit in Beverly Hills on Tuesday when he appeared to take a shot at a Netflix competitor that passed on “Wild Wild Country.”

Built-in

“To be honest, the reception was pretty cold at a lot of places,” Maclain Way said. “A lot of people were looking for a very namerecognizable celebrity with a built-in audience.” He added, “We had a meeting with a network executive at a place who was like, ‘What celebrities were part of this group?’ And then it was like, ‘Well, can we get a celebrity narrator to narrate it?’ And I was like, ‘Oh, this meeting’s not going well.’”

Asked by moderator Joanna Coles who the meeting was with, Way said, “It was HBO.”

Sarandos also spoke about the company’s overall deal with television producer Ryan Murphy, valued at more than $100 million.

“We’ve licensed most of Ryan Murphy’s programming for years in secondary windows on Netflix all around the world,” Sarandos said. “So we’ve got a pretty good idea of what people are watching.” He added, “I don’t think that people know that they’re watching a Ryan Murphy show all the time, but these shows have a sensibility that talks to them. It’s a little sexy, darkly funny.”

Of the deal with Murphy, he said, “I think we sized that deal to his proportionate value. And there’s an efficiency to what we’re doing.”

Oscar-winner Helen Hunt has joined “World on Fire,” the upcoming World War II drama for the BBC. She takes a lead role alongside Lesley Manville (“Phantom Thread”) in the drama from Peter Bowker (“The A Word”). ITVbacked production company Mammoth Screen is producing.

The seven-part series tells the story of the first year of the war as seen through the eyes ordinary people from from Britain, Poland, France, Germany and the US.

Jonah Hauer-King (“Howard’s End”) and Julia Brown (“The Last Kingdom”) will also star in the series, which has a varied international cast. New names added alongside Hunt include Zofia Wichlacz (“Warsaw 44”), Brian J. Smith (“Sense8”), Tomasz Kot (“Cold War”), and Eugenie Derouand (“Genius”).

Filming starts this week in Prague, Poland. The shoot will also take in Manchester, London, Paris and Berlin.

Damien Timmer, Mammoth Screen managing director, said the series “pieces together World War II with Pete’s characteristic irreverence and humanity.” He added: “From the siege of Warsaw, to Dunkirk, the fall of Paris and the battle of Britain, here is an epic story told on a human scale, with a truly international cast.”

Piers Wenger, controller of BBC Drama, said: “Pete’s funny, humane and poignant writing gives us a perspective on those early days of the Second World War which we have never seen before.”

Documenting the deepest ocean dives ever before attempted, Discovery has announced “Deep Planet,” a multi-platform limited series event slated to debut in 2019. A collaboration between explorer Victor Vescovo, Triton Submarines and EYOS Expeditions, the event will chronicle a state of the art submersible on the Five Deeps Expedition, as Dr Alan Jamieson leads a mission to floors of five oceans, including Puerto Rico Trench, South Sandwich Trench, Java Trench, Mariana Trench and Malloy Deep. The special will be filmed by documentary filmmaker Anthony Geffen, along with Atlantic Productions.

Epix has greenlit “The Panama Papers,” an original documentary premiering Nov 26 at 9 pm ET. From director Alex Winter, the film will chronicle the team of journalists behind the largest data leak in history, exposing a hidden network of tax evasion, fraud, rigged elections, and murder.

YouTube and Vox have announced a new YouTube Original series from Vox Entertainment, slated to premiere on Vox’s YouTube channel in 2019. The series seeks to address the source of viewers’ curiosity about today’s news, as a team of correspondents attempts to answer audience questions.