MILLION DOLLAR CASTING CALL
CMT’s “Million Dollar Quartet” rock doc is looking to film in Memphis.
Apublic casting call for “Million Dollar Quartet” — the upcoming eight-episode CMT drama about the birth of rock and roll in Memphis in the 1950s — will be held Feb. 13 at Elvis’ alma mater, the former Humes High School at 659 N. Manassas.
Described by the Memphis and Shelby County Film Commissioner Linn Sitler as “a giant casting call,” the event is set for 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the school, now called Humes Preparatory Academy Middle School. Producers are looking for performers to play such major figures as Elvis, B.B. King, Ike Turner and “Trixie Dean,” a composite girlfriend character for Elvis, in addition to needing “extras” and supporting characters.
The line forms at 7 a.m., and those auditioning are asked to arrive in period wardrobe and hairstyles.
The local casting call is part of a nationwide search for the lead actors. “The characters are all larger than life, so casting is a daunting challenge,” said CMT president Brian Philips, in a statement released Wednesday. “But we’re counting on the magic of Memphis to come alive again.”
“Million Dollar Quartet” represents the largest Memphis-based film or television production in several years, and could represent close to six months of work for some 160 local crew members, according to state Sen. Mark Norris (R-Collierville), a longtime advocate of Memphis filmmaking who helped recruit “Quartet” to town, even as such states as Louisiana vied for the project. Shooting is set to begin in late March.
The Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development has approved a grant of up to $4. 3 million for the production, based on money set aside for Memphis-area film production in Gov. Bill Haslam’s most recent budget, in part to counter accusations that film incentive programs in the past had favored Nashvillebased work.
To qualify for the full $4. 3 million, the production would have to spend at least $16 million on “qualified expenditures,” including crew salaries, payments to vendors and service providers, rentals and other local expenses.
Produced by Nashville cable channel Country Music Television and Los Angeles-based Think factory Media, which specializes in historical dramas (“Hatfields & McCoys,” “Texas Rising”), “Million Dollar Quartet” will be a scripted, fact-based drama inspired by the Tony-winning Broadway musical of the same name.
The focus will be on Sun Records founder Sam Phillips and the artists — Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins and Johnny Cash — whose paths connected on Dec. 4, 1956, for the so-called “Million Dollar Quartet” impromptu recording session at Sun.
“The series chronicles these young artists’ often jarring and sudden meteoric rise to fame in the face of sweeping political change and social unrest,” according to CMT.