Justin Timberlake Is Spinning Gold

Playing music mogul Neil Bogart

Justin Timberlake Is Spinning Gold

by Owen Williams |
Published on

Nope, it's nothing to do with Rumplestiltskin: Spinning Gold** is a biopic of pop music mogul Neil Bogart, and it's just snared Justin Timberlake to play the lead.

The gold in the title refers to the classic pop choons of the 1970s, while the spinning refers to "records", which older readers will recall as a medium in which people bought and played music in the days before you could steal it from the internet.

Neil Bogart was the famous American record executive behind KISS, T.Rex, Donna Summer and The Village People, and was widely credited with the rise of bubblegum pop. He was no relation to Humphrey (his real name was Bogatz) but still named the label he founded Casablanca. He worked in tandem with Peter Guber, who went on to become the heavyweight Hollywood producer behind the likes of Rain Man and Tim Burton's Batman.

Bogart was the loose basis for the character of Steve Waits, played by Paul Sand in 1980's Can't Stop the Music. He succumbed to cancer in 1982, at the horribly young age of 39. His sons Timothy Scott Bogart and Evan "Kidd" Bogart (himself a successful songwriter) recently founded Boardwalk Entertainment, and it's that production company that will produce the film: a rags-to-riches story of a poor New York kid who grows up to become a multimillionaire and part-define a musical era.

Spinning Gold is a saga about a young dreamer who started with nothing and came of age in the 60s and 70s, believing anything was possible and every risk was worth taking,” says Timothy Bogart. ”The main issue has been finding an actor who would embody Bogart. When Justin walked into the room, that was the moment I had been waiting for!”

Timberlake will also produce, along with the Bogarts and Gary Randall, and the "indie movie with a major studio-sized budget" is scheduled to go into production next year.

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