Lee Daniels, Florida Georgia Line’s Brian Kelley Developing Country Music-Gospel Drama at ABC

By Will Thorne

LOS ANGELES (Variety.com) – Lee Daniels and Brian Kelley, one half of the country music duo Florida Georgia Line, are developing a drama together at ABC.

The duo have set up a country music-gospel mashup series to a script plus penalty deal at the Disney-owned network, meaning will be forced to pay a penalty if the series isn’t picked up.

Titled “Moss Landing,” the prospective series is set in a small Florida coastal town and follows Marion James, a disgraced country star, and Sky Miller, an African-American gospel and soul singer in a sweeping love story. Over the course of the first season, the series will unravel the mysteries of Marion and Sky’s troubled pasts, watch them navigate the highs and lows of rebuilding their lives, and experience the love that binds them together, all set to genre blending music numbers.

The series hails from 20th Century Fox Television (where Daniels has an overall deal and which is also under Disney’s control), and has “The Son” and “Hemlock Grove” co-creator Lee Shipman in place to showrun and executive produce. Daniels and Marc Velez are exec producing via Entertainment, while Kelley will EP through his production company CuzBro, with Stephen Snedden and Justin Halliwell.

“Moss Landing” represents the second series which Daniels has in development at ABC, joining NFL player-inspired “Cupcake Men,” which received a put pilot commitment from the network back in October.

Daniels of course has plenty of experience in the music drama domain, having created both “Empire” and “Star” for Fox. While Kelley has been making moves into the producing business as of late. In October, Variety exclusively reported that Kelley had signed on to produce “May We All,” a jukebox musical which incorporates country hits by fellow stars of the genre like Luke Bryan, Miranda Lambert, Chris Stapleton and Dolly Parton as well as FGL’s own music.