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EXCLUSIVE: A number of films about the Grateful Dead have cropped up, but the challenge has always been to get music rights. Now ICM has the opposite situation. The agency has been granted unprecedented access to the seminal band’s music catalog and will package a narrative-style feature film built around those tunes. ICM lit agent Bruce Kaufman is leading the charge. He has done this before, including brokering the use of 20 re-recorded songs from The Beatles for Across the Universe. He’s working closely with The Grateful Dead team that includes band archivist David Lemieux and Mark Pinkus, GM of Grateful Dead Properties at Warner Music Group’s Rhino Entertainment. The band granted Rhino exclusive management of The Grateful Dead’s intellectual property back in 2006.
Formed in 1965, the San Francisco-based band broke up in 1995 after frontman/guitarist Jerry Garcia passed away shortly after the band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The Dead spent 30 years together and did 2300 live performances attended by a rabid following of Deadheads who followed the band cross country to hear these endless improvisational performances. The expectation is that the music will be used not for a biopic, but rather a film that captures that psychedelic Haight-Ashbury hippie spirit of the late 60s and early 70s, grounded by Dead songs like Truckin’, U.S. Blues, Dark Star and Good Lovin’.
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After seeing that Twilight will do possibly $150,000,000, and that it’s absolutely horrible, pretty much any thing goes. As long as you have a built in audience.
Good, one Jay! See you in line!
Hey Jay,
You are wrong. Millions of people care about these guys and their amazing music. Even while not being high (not that there’s anything wrong with that).
But thanks for chiming in with such a clear analysis of the possible profitability of a project that doesn’t even exist yet.
Eisner doesn’t sound so bad if he is shepherding this. The Dead were seminal group in American culture. This guy Jay Cohen on the other hand must shove marbles up his butt while listening to Friday by Rebecca Black, yes the dead aren’t relevant because they’re not on your billboard chart you f-ing douche bag.
Hmm…nice to see the Dead’s spirit of love, understanding, and tolerance being carried out here….
…………………………..It’s all a dream we dreamed
one afternoon long ago ………………………
If you’re going to do this, don’t f it up or don’t do it.
What about a feature film (not a documentary) about the Jerry Garcia and the Dead? This could be an interesting project in the right hands, and Lord knows we need more interesting movies these days (please, no more remakes).
Casting Garcia would be key, of course. If he could do it without the heavy-handed comedy, Zack Galifinakis would be an interesting choice – he already has a passing familiarity to Garcia. It could be a good dramatic role for him, if he could pull it off.
This is pretty fuckin cool. I saw these guys over 100 times and they are one of the most important bands ever. They are still playing as Further to a new generation of fans. I just saw them in NY recently and the audience was made up of people in their 20′s who were in grade school when Garcia died, to people in their 70′s. The music is still terrific and the people in the Dead family are what makes every show a special occasion. There was nothing quite like a Grateful Dead show.
“…grounded by Dead songs like Truckin’, U.S. Blues, Dark Star and Good Lovin’…”
Man oh man, Mike Fleming clearly isn’t a Deadhead.
hamlet 2 and the greatful dead movie. two movies no one will see at the box office. go team eisner. make dady shadow proud.
hey Jay Cohen, if your gonna make yourself look like an idiot, learn to spell first
hi d-erek. lol. keep on truckin with those smart movie ideas guyeee. lol
Love the Dead – please don’t ruin their legacy with a bad movie…..
the greatful dead. great movie for the handful of people who even know who they are that go to the movies and now how to log in to a computer. lol. maybe eisner should get some film rights and make a movie about someone else who is irrelvant like that mma fighter who noone knows or cares about. that guy”s career is over too. maybe merge the two projects since they are both about people no one has any interest in going to a theater to learn up on.
Hey, just one of the 22,000 thousand who attended the fabulous Further show at msg earlier this month, and know just how relevant the dead are and will remain. If you make it, we will come to see it.
Long, long ago and far away there was this band that used to play. Quite a life some would say. Some of their songs we of fun times. Some were cries from the drugs that weren’t so nice or so cool. Some were of Suicide. Some of them, quite a few, were of a deep spiritual journey that only those who have experienced them can fathom.