According to Variety.com, Toni Braxton will star as singer Darlene Love in OWN’s biopic of the famed pop vocalist. My Name is Love: The Darlene Love Story is slated for a December premiere, and the telefilm revolves around Love’s long career in the music industry, starting out as the key voice behind Phil Spector’s Wall of Sound hits from the 1960s. OWN’s first scripted movie was brought to the network by Morgan Neville, the documentarian who was behind last year’s Academy Award-winning feature, Twenty Feet from Stardom, about Love and other well-known backup singers.
OWN has also announced it’s set Octavia Spencer to star in a miniseries revolving around a journalist investigating the notorious mass murder and cover-up in Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1921. Tulsa comes from drama veteran (and Oklahoma native) Nancy Miller (TNT’s Saving Grace).
Additionally, OWN has ordered 20 more episodes of Tyler Perry’s hit primetime soap The Haves and the Have Nots, bringing it to 56 episodes to air through 2015. A new Perry drama series, Single Mom’s Club, is set for a fall debut with a 20-episode order.
Justin Timberlake is lined up as the first guest on the new season of Oprah Winfrey’s interview series Oprah’s Master Class, to premiere May 11. Another programming tentpole planned for next year is the seven-part documentary series Belief, examining the origins of faith “through the eyes of believers.”
Posts tagged as ““My Name is Love: The Darlene Love Story””
OWN has acquired the rights to Darlene Love’s memoir, and will adapt the book as a TV movie with Oprah Winfrey executive producing. Love’s memoir, titled My Name is Love: The Darlene Love Story, will be OWN’s first original telepic. Love is also exec producing alongside Morgan Neville.
“The fantastic life journey of music great Darlene Love is the perfect choice for our first original scripted movie,” said Sheri Salata, president, OWN. “From her first hit song to her darkest days cleaning houses in Beverly Hills to make ends meet, to the triumphant comeback that made rock and roll history, Darlene is a true living legend who worked with many of the greatest talents in music from Elvis Presley and Tom Jones to Frank Sinatra, Aretha Franklin and Bruce Springsteen.”
OWN has also licensed the first broadcast window on cable TV for backup singer documentary Twenty Feet From Stardom, which was helmed by Neville and features Love. Broadcast window begins next year.
article by AJ Marechal via Variety.com
“The fantastic life journey of music great Darlene Love is the perfect choice for our first original scripted movie,” said Sheri Salata, president, OWN. “From her first hit song to her darkest days cleaning houses in Beverly Hills to make ends meet, to the triumphant comeback that made rock and roll history, Darlene is a true living legend who worked with many of the greatest talents in music from Elvis Presley and Tom Jones to Frank Sinatra, Aretha Franklin and Bruce Springsteen.”
OWN has also licensed the first broadcast window on cable TV for backup singer documentary Twenty Feet From Stardom, which was helmed by Neville and features Love. Broadcast window begins next year.
article by AJ Marechal via Variety.com