Smash Producers Developing NBC Series Featuring the Music of Diane Warren

Craig Zadan and Neil Meron, the producing duo behind Smash and the film adaptations of Hairspray and Chicago, have another musical-minded project up their sleeves. The newly-minted 2013 Oscars producers are developing an hourlong series for NBC based on the music of acclaimed songwriter Diane Warren, who will serve as a consulting producer on the drama.

Deadline reports that the dramedy will follow a thirtysomething songwriter who is unlucky in love, despite having written some of pop culture’s most epic love songs. The music catalog of Warren will weave into the narrative, although not quite in the same way that Smash’s production numbers pop up in NBC’s other musical show.

Warren’s song list includes Aerosmith’s “I Don’t Want To Miss A Thing,” LeAnn Rimes’ “How Do I Live,” Celine Dion’s “Because You Loved Me” and Toni Braxton’s “Unbreak My Heart.”

At the moment, Zadan and Meron are two of the busiest producers in Hollywood, having been hard at work on Smash, courting Seth MacFarlane to serve as Oscar host, while also executive producing projects like Lifetime’s Steel Magnolias remake, the NBC soap White House Confidential, a Bonnie & Clyde miniseries and an Anna Nicole Smith bio pic. 

The powerhouse partnership also has a hand in Broadway, having been behind the recent revivals of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying and Promises, Promises.

Here's hoping the series offers up plenty of tearjerker moments. Grab a hanky and flashback to 1998 when Warren made audiences cry with the Aerosmith smash "I Don't Want to Miss a Thing" from the disaster movie Armageddon.