Million Dollar Quartet, the Tony-nominated 2010 Broadway musical about a momentous night in the history of rock 'n' roll, will serve as the basis for the new TV series Sun Records, debuting February 23 on the CMT cable network, according to a report in Rolling Stone.
The musical told the story of what happened the night of December 4, 1956 when young rockers Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, and Johnny Cash happened to be in the studio of the label, Sun Records, and held a legendary jam session. The eight-part TV series will expand the focus to show how Sun Records founder and producer Sam Phillips (Chad Michael Murray of One Tree Hill and The Gilmore Girls), molded the talent and early careers of the four musicians, and affected the trajectories of country, R&B and blues for the next 60 years.
The series will look at other seminal artists of the time, including Muddy Waters, B.B. King, Fats Domino and Ike Turner.
The series will co-star Drake Milligan as Presley, Kevin Fonteyne as Cash, Christian Lees as Lewis, and Dustin Ingram as Perkins; plus Jonah Lees as Jimmy Swaggart, Trevor Donovan as Eddy Arnold, and Kerry Holliday as Ike Turner.
There was no immediate word on who will write the series. The show's Tony-nominated libretto was cowritten by Colin Escott and Floyd Mutrux.
The show was a long-running hit in Chicago, where it originated. It ran 489 performances on Broadway, toured North America for four years, and played Las Vegas for four years.
