Freeform On Board For Danny Strong EP’d Puerto Rico-Set ‘Trap Queen’ From ‘Scandal’ Scribe Miguel Nolla

Dominic Patten
·2 min read
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EXCLUSIVE: Latin trap is coming to the Disney empire via the co-creator of Empire.

Freeform has put the Puerto Rico-set Trap Queen in development with Danny Strong executive producing, I’ve learned. The music rich project from the American territory was created by Scandal and Roswell, New Mexico writer Miguel Nolla.

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An alum of the Disney•ABC Writing Program, the San Juan-born Nolla will serve as showrunner on Trap Queen.

The drama focuses on a gay young man who returns to Puerto Rico after a life changing event. With the burgeoning local music scene as both the backdrop and the soundtrack, that move forces him to face family and romantic issues he thought he had left behind and never expected.

Along with Nolla and Strong, Danny Strong Productions’ Mandy Safavi will also EP the 20th Television venture with SB Projects’ Scooter Braun, James Shin and Scott Manson.

For those of you who don’t know, Trap music is a tenet of Southern hip-hop that bubbled up into the mainstream in the early 2000s from the likes of T.I., Jeezy and Gucci Mane. The term trap is a derivative of the Atlanta slang for a place where drugs are purchased and sold. Over the decades the style has been picked up in various forms by artists from Drake, Kendrick Lamar and Cardi B and all the way to Taylor Swift. Latin trap is the Puerto Rico subgenre that incorporates some of the island’s reggaetón style and other elements.

A former assistant to Shonda Rhimes, Florida State U grad Nolla’s CV has not only the Gladiators gangs and Roswell on it, but also an episode of the Grey’s Anatomy web series, Freeform’s Stitchers, Showtimes’ Hombre and Netflix’s First Kill, among more.

Nolla is repped Gersh’s Ian Greenstein, Katy McCaffrey, and Sam Sekoff.

Almost always with a full dance card himself, Strong is currently filming the opioid crisis focused Dopesick in Virginia. The Hulu limited series stars Michael Keaton, Peter Sarsgaard, Kaitlyn Dever, and Rosario Dawson. Having inked a new deal with 20th TV in late 2019, the CAA, Gotham Group and attorney Alan Wertheimer at Jackoway Austen repped Strong also has Arab-American female centered Ya Bint in development with Freeform, The Answers with FX and The Growing Season on ABC, based on self made pumpkin queen Sarah Frey’s memoir of the same name.

Braun, who recently unloaded his Ithaca Holdings media company, has some irons of his own in the content fire. FX’s Dave and the recently released YouTube docuseries Demi Lovato: Dancing With The Devil are among the bright lights under the SB Projects banner. The shingle also has a deal with Amazon to develop small screen output over the next few years.

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