Baz Luhrmann’s Musical Series The Get Down Heads To Netflix

Australian director Baz Luhrmann, who changed modern musical cinema with his 2001 hit Moulin Rouge, is making the leap to the small screen for his next project. Alongside fellow visionary David Fincher, who has seen massive success with House Of Cards, Luhrmann’s musical TV series The Get Down will debut exclusively on Netflix next year.

The streaming giant has ironed out a deal with Luhrmann to deliver thirteen one-hour episodes. This marks the end of a year-long period in which the helmer, The Shield creator Shawn Ryan and Sony TV worked in conjunction with Netflix to finalize details. During that time, a series of episode directors were sought, with Luhrmann signed on to direct the first two episodes as well as the finale.

Set in New York City during the ‘70s, the show will explore the South Bronx during that epoch and how the innovative minds of its youngsters spawned disco, hip-hop and punk.

Here’s what Luhrmann had to say on the show’s bright future:

“In this golden era of TV, the Netflix culture puts no constraint on creative possibilities. So it is a natural home for The Get Down, a project I have been contemplating and working on now for over 10 years. Throughout, I’ve been obsessed with the idea of how a city in its lowest moment, forgotten and half destroyed could give birth to such creativity and originality in music, art and culture. I’m thrilled to be working with my partners at Sony and collaborating with a team of extraordinary writers and musicians, many of whom grew up with and lived the story we’ve set out to tell.”

The Get Down is scheduled to arrive on Netflix worldwide in 2016. Before then, you can check out the brief 18-second teaser that also landed today above and the show’s detailed synopsis below.

The one-hour, 13-episode drama from Sony Pictures Television will focus on 1970s New York City – broken down and beaten up, violent, cash strapped — dying. Consigned to rubble, a rag-tag crew of South Bronx teenagers are nothings and nobodies with no one to shelter them – except each other, armed only with verbal games, improvised dance steps, some magic markers and spray cans. From Bronx tenements, to the SoHo art scene; from CBGBs to Studio 54 and even the glass towers of the just-built World Trade Center, The Get Down is a mythic saga of how New York at the brink of bankruptcy gave birth to hip-hop, punk and disco — told through the lives and music of the South Bronx kids who changed the city, and the world…forever.