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Universal Music Group Nashville announces Sing Me Back Home Productions, a new production arm of the Nashville-based entertainment company focused on projects for film and TV. Focusing on music integration and new ways of storytelling, Sing Me Back Home Productions taps into the deep catalog of artists from throughout UMG Nashville’s history as well as celebrating both newly discovered talent and stories.
Led by UMG Nashville Chair & CEO, Cindy Mabe, and SVP of Digital Business and Creative Development, Dawn Gates, the new division focuses on developing a content slate for a variety of documentaries, original scripted and unscripted television, feature films, and short form content, plus, it will be heavily involved in securing production partners, music supervision, and distribution.
“Country music has always been the home of the richest storytellers in music. Storytellers like Merle Haggard, whose song ‘Sing Me Back Home’ helped frame the intent and name behind our production company,” explains Mabe. “Songs and stories can transport people and literally sing them back home no matter where they are in the world. Creating a new canvas for our storytellers to paint was a natural next step for our artists to talk to their fans in a new way. With several productions underway, this new endeavor fits prominently into what we are sustaining and building as a music company: roots, legacy, music discovery, and storytelling. We are finding faith, family, and heartland are at the core of our business and we are making sure we are building generational content for different mediums across a variety of platforms and shepherding it into the homes of our audience.”
UMG Nashville’s Sing Me Back Home Productions has partnered with ITV America’s Thinkfactory Media to develop and produce a new docuseries that will follow the personal and professional lives of Michael Trotter Jr. and Tanya Trotter, the GRAMMY-nominated husband-and-wife duo known as The War And Treaty. The new docuseries, helmed by Thinkfactory’s Emmy-nominated CEO and veteran producer Adam Reed (“Marriage Boot Camp,” “Gene Simmons’ Family Jewels”), will chart The War And Treaty’s breakout success as Michael and Tanya work together to navigate their ascending careers as musicians and their homelife, which includes 13 family members living under the same roof. The War And Treaty docuseries, which is already in the works with a broadcast partner, is the first among many projects in development via Sing Me Back Home Productions’ broader collaboration with Thinkfactory Media.
“Country music and its community of artists, past and present, offer such a vast and rich world to explore for content,” says Reed. “As Thinkfactory doubles down on work rooted in the Heartland, we’re incredibly bullish on the projects we’re developing with Sing Me Back Home, and we admire what Cindy and her group are building at a time when the genre and its hitmakers are flying higher than ever.”
Also on the horizon is the release of the critically acclaimed documentary Gloria Gaynor: I Will Survive, in partnership with Storyville Entertainment. The film, directed by Emmy-nominated producer Betsy Schechter, follows the unexpectedly difficult eight-year journey of disco icon, GRAMMY Award-winning artist, and global legend Gloria Gaynor as she writes and records a gospel album, to inspire audiences to survive and thrive. Going behind the mic, audiences find a remarkable tale that fueled Gloria’s path to stardom and a present-day message as inspirational as her iconic song ‘I Will Survive.’ The documentary premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival, was the official opening night film at the Nashville Film Festival where it also won the Audience Award, and the film won the Best Feature Documentary Award at La Femme Women’s International Film Festival in Los Angeles and most recently won The Palm Springs International Film Festival audience award “Best Of Fest.”
“We are thrilled to have the expertise of Cindy, Dawn, and the Sing Me Back Home team to partner on producing ‘Gloria Gaynor: I Will Survive,'” says Schechter. “Just like her iconic song ‘I Will Survive,’ Gloria’s life is equally inspirational and this film has the power to impact audiences around the world for years to come.”
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