Focus Features & ‘Green Book’ Producer Jim Burke In Tune With Bill Pohlad Music Biopic ‘Dreamin’ Wild’
EXCLUSIVE: Focus Features and Green Book producer Jim Burke are teaming up to produce music biopic Dreamin’ Wild, which will be written and directed by Bill Pohlad (Love & Mercy).
Based on a long-read article by Steven Kurutz in mini-magazine True Story, the blue-chip movie prospect will follow the real-life story of musical duo Donnie and Joe Emerson, whose family leveraged their farm in the 1970s in order to produce the brothers’ record, Dreamin’ Wild. The album, an eclectic mix of rock, soul, R&B, country and funk, went on to be wildly unknown until it was rediscovered nearly thirty years after the release, igniting an unexpected music career for the Emerson brothers.
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Focus will develop and produce alongside former Focus production president Burke under his Innisfree Pictures banner. Steven Snyder will oversee production for Innisfree and Josh McLaughlin will oversee for Focus. Cast has yet to be set.
12 Years A Slave, Into The Wild and Tree Of Life producer Pohlad recently directed 2014 Brian Wilson portrait Love & Mercy. Paul Dano, John Cusack, Elizabeth Banks and Paul Giamatti starred in the well-received film, which played at Toronto, Berlin and SXSW and took close to $30M globally.
Before Focus, Oscar-winner Burke and Jim Taylor ran production company Ad Hominem with Alexander Payne, working on movies such as Downsizing, The Descendants and Cedar Rapids.
Pohlad is represented by CAA.
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