Fox is developing a drama based on one woman’s rise through the music industry in the 1980s, back when the business was all cocaine and cassingles, and the biggest threat out there was Maxell. Deadline reports that the show, Full Nelson, will be loosely based on the life and career of Kathy Nelson, the former president of film music for Universal and Disney, who rose through the ranks by working for many years as an executive at MCA (and whose famed family tree includes Ozzie, Harriet, Ricky, and those other Nelsons). In her time as a soundtrack supervisor, Nelson helped assemble the songs for Krippendorf’s Tribe, as well as worked on other films like Beverly Hills Cop, Pulp Fiction, Pump Up The Volume, High Fidelity, and Rushmore, which we suppose are also notable.
Full Nelson will actually be a reunion of sorts, as it’s being produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, for whom Nelson worked on films like Con Air, The Rock, and Dangerous Minds. Jeffrey Lieber (best known for writing the original, abandoned pilot for what became Lost and also for creating the short-lived dramas Miami Medical and The Whole Truth) will handle the script. True, the last time network TV tried to do a show about the music industry, it got Love Monkey. But this has the potential to succeed; really, all it would take is a couple of thinly veiled caricatures of Don Simpson and David Geffen. Here’s hoping they don’t take the high road.