A New Gig for Salman/More Coen's Musicals

Potential TV mogul Salman Rushdie???

One of the cooler things that happens at the Telluride Film Festival is that you actually have the opportunity to meet and interact with many of the people that are there as a part of the festival.  I've, unbelievably, had real conversations with Oscar nominee Laura Linney, film critic Leonard Maltin, documentarian Ken Burns among others.  One of those others was award winning author Salman Rushdie (he of "Satanic Verses" fame and the survivor of an Iranian Ayatollah's fatwa).  Rushdie is a member of the Telluride Film Festival's Board of Advisors, so he's there most years.  We talked about the film he was introducing in 2008, Nadita Das' "Firaaq."

All this preamble is to get to the story we found today on Anne Thompson's "Thompson on Hollywood" blog today..that Rushdie is going to be producing a television program for American television.  Called "The Next People," Thompson reports that its headed for Showtime and will be a science fiction series.  So how about that?  I don't know if you've ever read any of Rushdie's work, but if the series is remotely in the mode of his literature...it will be challenging.

You can find Thompson's complete article here:
http://blogs.indiewire.com/thompsononhollywood/2011/06/13/in_the_works_june_13/

Incidentally, Thompson (with whom I've also had a conversation in Telluride) also seconds The Playlist story from yesterday concerning the Coen Brothers next project being a musical or heavily musically oriented. Today's thought: "Fargo: The Musical"  featuring such musical numbers as "Three Dead in Brainerd," "Lundegaard's Lament," and "The Wood Chipper's Waltz."

And finally, tomorrow I'm going to start talking about a new film that's currently in development.  A film that I know some scuttlebutt about because of...(you guessed it) the Telluride Film Fesival.