EXCLUSIVE: Brillstein Entertainment Partners has signed Australian writer-director-producer Josh Wakely in all areas.
An Emmy winner for his Netflix Unique collection Beat Bugs based mostly on the music of the Beatles, which he additionally created and directed, and the originator of the upcoming Amazon collection The Best based mostly on the life story of Muhammad Ali, Wakely has gained a repute for securing rights to among the world’s most iconic music catalogues, life tales, and different premium IP for adaptation into movie and tv. Wakely secured the Beatles catalog to be used in his animated youngsters TV collection Beat Bugs from Sony, and he’s pulled off such feats with different in style musician estates. He lately secured the songs of Bob Dylan for a brand new dramatic collection he’s growing based mostly on the people legend’s tunes all through the a long time. Dylan will function EP of that collection.
As well as, BEP will even signify Wakely’s venture-backed movie and TV agency Grace, which operates from New York, Los Angeles and Sydney and is funded by traders together with Alex Black’s Lyrical Media. Grace, whose rising staff consists of Derek Iger, EVP of Improvement & Manufacturing, focuses on adapting iconic IP to inform transformative and aspirational tales and is structured to permit firm traders to additionally make investments straight into Grace initiatives.
BEP will deal with Wakely as a author and director and can work with Grace to speed up the event of the corporate’s present IP and to help its high-level relationships, comparable to Wakely’s long-standing collaboration with Common Music Group (UMG), which has up to now generated a number of initiatives.
Wakely is at present in pre-production on an untitled music-themed science fiction function set within the close to future that Wakely will direct from his unique screenplay. The totally financed movie, budgeted at greater than $20 million and set to shoot in Australia, is at present out to expertise.
Wakely secured life rights to boxing legend Ali, then originated and developed over the course of three years the scripted collection The Best, which is now headed into manufacturing at Amazon with Wakely serving as EP together with an all-star staff assembled by Wakely, together with Michael B. Jordan’s Outlier Society, Jay Z’s Roc Nation, Common Music Group, and showrunner Ben Watkins.
Wakely created and in addition ran the Netflix collection Motown Magic based mostly on that report label’s catalog.
Wakely is represented by Craig Jacobson at Hansen Jacobson.
