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Netflix orders eight-part musical drama from La La Land director Damien Chazelle

Netflix orders eight-part musical drama from La La Land director Damien Chazelle

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The Eddy will take place in Paris

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Image: Lionsgate

Netflix has ordered an eight-part musical drama series called The Eddy, executive produced by La La Land director Damien Chazelle, Variety reports. Chazelle will also direct two of the episodes. The bulk of the show will be written by British TV writer Jack Thorne, who is best known for his work on Skins, The Last Panthers, and the National Treasure TV miniseries. He’s also part of the writing team for Colin Trevorrow’s Star Wars: Episode IX.

The series’s score will be written by Glen Ballard, a six-time Grammy winner known for co-producing Alanis Morissette’s Jagged Little Pill, contributing to the production of Michael Jackson’s Bad and Thriller, and co-writing the book and music for 2011’s Ghost the Musical. He was nominated for an Oscar for the Josh Groban song “Believe,” which he wrote for the Polar Express soundtrack.

The tone will fall somewhere between ‘La La Land’ and ‘Whiplash’

The series will take place in Paris, revolving around a nightclub and its owner. The Eddy will be shot in France and include dialogue in English, French, and Arabic. No casting information has been announced, but Variety reports that Erik Barmack, Netflix’s VP of international originals, has said the show will employ mainly French actors and crew. He also said the tone of the show will be somewhere between La La Land and Chazelle’s darker, more cerebral 2014 breakout film Whiplash.

This is another big move for Netflix, which has spent much of the last year snapping up exclusive rights to (or just outright financing) work from A-list directors like the Coen brothers, Ava DuVernay, Martin Scorsese, Shonda Rhimes, David Fincher, Dee Rees, and Noah Baumbach. At 32 years old, Chazelle is the youngest best director winner in Oscar history, so he makes a solid addition to that list.

However, signing up to make an expensive musical series is a little confusing. Baz Luhrmann’s The Get Down, a $120 million musical series chronicling the rise of disco and rap in the Bronx in 1970s, was canceled after its first season. Netflix has canceled six expensive or unpopular shows already this year, a move it had previously made extremely rarely.

The Eddy, however, certainly falls in line with Netflix’s intention to focus on more international content. Though the platform still doesn’t release streaming numbers, it received plenty of attention for the Korean-English film Okja this summer, and claims that the first season of the Spanish-English series Narcos was more popular than that year’s Game of Thrones. Netflix’s British production The Crown has been nominated for three Emmys this year, including Best Drama.

There is no release date set for The Eddy, but it will be produced by IMG and released exclusively on Netflix.