New TV Series based on Bob Dylan songs

I guess it's better than car commercials? Or not?

Amazon Developing TV Series From Bob Dylan Songs
Show would use characters, themes and music from artist’s 600-song catalog

Amazon.com Inc. and Lions Gate Entertainment Corp. are developing a TV series based on songs by Bob Dylan, and have secured permission to use any of the 74-year-old artist’s lyrics and compositions, according to people familiar with the matter.

Episodes will be peppered with snippets of Mr. Dylan’s songs that serve to advance the show’s plot, in addition to providing a soundtrack. Some of the back story in the first episode, for example, draws from Mr. Dylan’s 1964 “The Ballad of Hollis Brown,” ... Two songs would likely be featured in each episode. The stories they inspire collide in dramatic circumstances, according to a person familiar with the matter.

 

Lilly Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts is tailor made for something like this, as well as Frankie Lee & Judas Priest. I guess this could work for awhile. Isis and Black Diamond Bay would be interesting as well.

 

Joey: King of the Streets

 

Amazon Developing TV Series From Bob Dylan Songs »

Amazon.com Inc. AMZN 1.45 % and Lions Gate Entertainment Corp. LGF 2.22 % are developing a TV series based on songs by Bob Dylan, and have secured permission to use any of the 74-year-old artist’s lyrics and compositions, according to people familiar with the matter.

The project is to be written and directed by Josh Wakely, an Australian writer-director to whom Mr. Dylan has given carte blanche to use any of his 600-plus songs, one of these people said. Mr. Wakely’s production company, Grace: A Storytelling Company, and Lions Gate would co-produce the series, though Amazon hasn’t yet signed a deal with them to make the pilot or stream the series, these people said.

Mr. Dylan isn’t signed as a producer and isn’t involved creatively beyond the songs he has already written. Financial terms of the deal with Mr. Dylan weren’t clear, though Mr. Dylan’s managers have a reputation in the entertainment industry for cutting reasonable deals for projects they believe in. He and Mr. Wakely had no prior relationship, the people said.

With its story and characters inspired by some of Mr. Dylan’s narrative lyrics, the show has initially been titled “Time Out of Mind,” after the singer’s hit 1997 album, which won three Grammy Awards and has sold over one million copies in the U.S., according to Nielsen Music. The show spans decades but is set partly in the 1960s and 1970s in New York, where Mr. Dylan got his start.

Episodes will be peppered with snippets of Mr. Dylan’s songs that serve to advance the show’s plot, in addition to providing a soundtrack. Some of the back story in the first episode, for example, draws from Mr. Dylan’s 1964 “The Ballad of Hollis Brown,” a song about a destitute man on a South Dakota farm who shoots himself and his family in desperation. Two songs would likely be featured in each episode, including “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door,” ”Mr. Tambourine Man“ and ”Joey.” The stories they inspire collide in dramatic circumstances, according to a person familiar with the matter.

The songs featured in the show could be performed by singers other than Mr. Dylan, who controls his own lyrics and melodies but not his sound recordings. Those are owned by his longtime record label, Sony Corp. SNE -1.28 % ’s Columbia Records. Without separately paying Columbia for permission, the show’s producers can’t use the original recordings. Columbia didn’t respond to a request for comment. It wasn’t clear who might be among those potential performers.

Music-based TV shows have been cropping up in recent years, from HBO’s “Vinyl,” a current series created by the Rolling Stones’ Mick Jagger, among others, about the record business in the 1970s, to Fox’s “Empire,” a hit show about the hip-hop world. Netflix Inc. NFLX 1.56 % plans to premiere “The Get Down,” a series about the New York disco scene, in August.

But the “Time Out of Mind” series won’t be centered on the music world, according to people familiar with the matter.

Mr. Wakely, who grew up in a working-class, music-obsessed family, is the creator of an animated series that Netflix announced earlier this year called Beat Bugs, based on Beatles songs. For that show, which premieres this summer, Mr. Wakely acquired the rights from Sony/ATV Music Publishing to record covers of John Lennon and Paul McCartney songs that will be woven through each episode. Eddie Vedder, of Pearl Jam, and pop star Pink are among those who have been enlisted to sing.

For songwriters, landing songs in TV shows and films is an increasingly attractive way to earn money, as music sales decline and as terrestrial radio’s playlists have narrowed. Aging songwriters in particular are feeling the pinch as many radio stations redefine “oldies” for the modern era, focusing on the 1980s and ‘90s rather than the ‘60s and ‘70s.

Though a counterculture hero in his heyday, Mr. Dylan has been cashing checks from corporate America for years, making his debut as a celebrity pitchman in a 2004 TV ad for line of lingerie from L Brands LB 0.98 % ’ Victoria’s Secret. He appeared alongside a model slinking around to a remixed version of his song “Love Sick”—coincidentally from the “Time Out of Mind” album.



He participated in Cadillac ads in 2008, appeared in a Pepsi PEP -0.38 % commercial that aired during the Super Bowl in 2009 and was featured in TV commercials that began airing last year for IBM IBM -0.03 % ’s artificial intelligence software, known as Watson.

“I can read 800 million pages per second,” Watson tells Mr. Dylan in one IBM ad. “My analysis shows your major themes are time passes and love fades.”

It is relatively fast and easy for movie and TV producers to license the publishing rights to Mr. Dylan’s songs, said Playback Music Supervision’s Billy Gottlieb, who recently secured permission to use a bootleg version of “Tangled Up in Blue” for Showtime’s upcoming series “Roadies.” Global publishing rights to use a song written by Mr. Dylan in a TV show generally run between $20,000 and $25,000, said Mr. Gottlieb.

“You would think Bob Dylan would be an issue—being one of the greatest songwriters who ever lived,” Mr. Gottlieb said. “But it’s completely the opposite.”

 

This has the potential to be seriously awful and contrived.

 

I stick to his records.

 

This sounds like a really, really bad idea. And of course I'll watch it (at least once, anyway).

 

I'm Not There

 

It could work, if they don't stick too close to 'the facts'. Actually, I'm surprised it's not be tried before.

 

When Hattie Carroll meets up with Napoleon in rags I'm turning it off.

 

They say I shot a man named Gray
and took his wife to Italy
she inherited a million bucks
and when she died it came to me
I can't help it if I'm lucky

 

The singing Sopranos.

 

Julius and Ethel

These episodes could write themselves.

 

If the series should prove to be a hit, this would prove to be a smart move by Dylan as if would give his catalog a lift.

In a strange way Dylan tried to pull it off with Masked & Anonymous. I sort of pictured the scene of Jack Fate and Cheech waiting for the bus as " There must be someway out of here said the Joker to the Thief" .

 

I find the idea utterly stupid. The hell with Dylan already.

 

I'm looking forward to the episode with Jezebel the nun, knitting violently .

 

Of course, this probably means my dream of a Coen Brothers directed film of this story is slipping further and further away...

 

One More Cup of Coffee

First song that came to my mind reading about this. I will remain optimistic that those doing this will have some idea of how to do it properly. For now.

 

I hope it's about a girl who invited her three possible fathers to attend her wedding on a sun-drenched Mediterranean island.

 

What about "Gotta Serve Somebody" I'd like that one.

 

My limit is a mule with binoculars and a necklace, it's been done.............

 

Johnny’s in the basement
Mixing up the medicine

Maggie comes fleet foot
Face full of black soot
Talkin’ that the heat put
Plants in the bed but
The phone’s tapped anyway
Maggie says that many say
They must bust in early May
Orders from the D.A.

 

The Ghost of Electricity howls in the bones of her.....CUT!!!! It's a print!

 

I don't get the hate. I can think of much worse ideas than this.

Lily, Rosemary could be a three parter.
Bob Dylan's 115th Dream could simultaneously be the greatest and worst thing ever done.

Gotta Serve Somebody was used in a recent episode of Billions. It worked, made sense with the character who quoted it, and more interestingly, he didn't announce that it was Dylan being quoted. They then played the song over the closing credits.

 

I think it will only work if a common person can watch the show and not know, or care, that the basic premise or the characters are Dylan related.

A previous poster quoted the following stanza:

They say I shot a man named Gray
and took his wife to Italy
she inherited a million bucks
and when she died it came to me
I can't help it if I'm lucky

They could make a great episode just based on the ideas from these few lines -- they'd have to expand upon them and create an episode that wasn't kitchy with nods to Dylan, but it could work well.

Or it could be too literal with it's use of Dylan and be a disaster. The more 'arty' and less commercial the better.