Netflix Orders TV Series From Baz Luhrmann, 70’s Drama “The Get Down”

Our Bazza Luhr-mahhhn is set to broaden his talents to the small screen—or, ~computer screen~ if we’re being literal—as Netflix US has ordered a 13 episode drama series from BL, called ‘The Get Down’. Go Baz!

The drama will be set in 1970’s NYC – a fascinating period wherein the music scene was exploding: previously unheard of styles and subcultures, like punk and hip hop, were throttled on to the scene, while crime plagued the Big Apple, urban decay and political dramas were rife, the Vietnam War was always on the other-side-of-the-world periphery and Patti Smith was roaming the streets being effortlessly everything, collecting the kinds of experiences that would, a couple of decades down the track, form your favourite book.

Announcing the series in a statement, Luhrmann said: “In this golden era of TV, the Netflix culture puts no constraint on creative possibilities. So it is a natural home for ‘The Get Down,’ a project I have been contemplating and working on now for over 10 years. Throughout, I’ve been obsessed with the idea of how a city in its lowest moment, forgotten and half destroyed, could give birth to such creativity and originality in music, art and culture.”

Baz will executively produce the series as well as direct the first two and season final episodes of ‘The Get Down’, coming sometime in 2016. Catherine Martin, Academy-award winning costume designer and Luhrmann’s squeeze, will be on board as production and costume designer. By next year, Netflix AU will hopefully be well-established as a stalwart of Aussie TV consumption – fingers crossed Netflix US shares Baz’s work Down Under. 

Read Netflix’s synopsis of the series below, and watch the brief teaser for ‘The Get Down’ after the jump.

“Consigned to rubble, a rag-tag crew of South Bronx teenagers are nothings and nobodies with no one to shelter them — except each other, armed only with verbal games, improvised dance steps, some magic markers and spray cans. From Bronx tenements, to the SoHo art scene; from CBGBs to Studio 54 and even the glass towers of the just-built World Trade Center, ‘The Get Down’ is a mythic saga of how New York at the brink of bankruptcy gave birth to hip-hop, punk and disco — told through the lives and music of the South Bronx kids who changed the city, and the world…forever.”

Lead image by Greg Wood via Getty.

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