Baz Luhrmann making Netflix drama

Baz Luhrmann is making The Get Down for Netflix, an original music-driven drama set in 1970s New York.

The series from the Moulin Rouge and The Great Gatsby director will bow on Netflix in 2016. Luhrmann will executive produce the show and direct the opening episode and last two instalments of the thirteen-part project.

Sony Pictures Television is producing and its sales arm is expected to handle international distribution.

The Shield creator Shawn Ryan is among the exec producers of The Get Down. Catherine Martin (The Great Gatsby, Moulin Rouge) and Paul Watters (Australia) will also exec produce.

The series will follow a ‘rag-tag crew of South Bronx teenagers’ who ‘are nothings and nobodies with no one to shelter them’. It will follow their adventures as the hip-hop scene emerges and disco takes hold.

“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,” said Luhrmann.

“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.”

“We are thrilled to support Baz, Catherine and Paul and their team in their quest to illuminate those same dreams through the artists who came of age in the cauldron of the Bronx in the late 1970s,” said Cindy Holland, vice president of original content for Netflix.