Ryan Murphy’s making his way back to the musical dramedy.
He and his former Glee star Gwyneth Paltrow are prepping a TV version of One Hit Wonders, which they had formerly set up as a film project at Sony. Murphy, who graces the cover of this week’s Hollywood Reporter, says he plans to take the pitch out to cable networks later this year, with Paltrow attached to executive produce and star.
Per Murphy, Paltrow will play a 40-year-old woman, who 15 years after recording a hit song is broke, exhausted and the victim of cat-fishing by her roommate. Her fate changes when she gets a call from a record label looking to form a super group: her and two other singers who each had a hit song in the 1990s. Though the label has ulterior motives, the group takes off and the trio becomes an inspiration to women everywhere.
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“I love this idea that there is a second act,” says Murphy, who adds that the series will feature original music and center on a theme of female empowerment. Like much of Murphy’s recent work, One Hit Wonders is expected to be an anthology series, with Paltrow only set to appear in the first season.
Murphy got the rights back from Sony after former chief Amy Pascal, with whom he’d worked closely on Eat Pray Love, exited the studio earlier this year. The film iteration, first reported in early 2012, had locked in other top talent, including Reese Witherspoon and Cameron Diaz as the two singers alongside Paltrow in the super group. Neither actress is currently attached to the TV project. Still, Murphy insists One Hit Wonders will make a “much better” TV show than film, and already has themes for the first four seasons mapped out.