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‘God’s Country’ Drama Inspired By Blake Shelton Song In Works At NBC From Shelton & Gary Scott Thompson

NBC is developing God’s Country, a drama inspired by Blake Shelton’s hit song of the same name. The project hails from the long-time Voice coach Shelton, Las Vegas creator Gary Scott Thompson and Universal Television.

Written by Thompson, in God’s Country, when the patriarch of a hardworking Midwestern farm family dies mysteriously in a car accident, his grown children discover he was keeping a devastating secret they could never have imagined.

Shelton’s song “God’s Country”, written by Devin Dawson, Hardy and Jordan Schmidt, was released in March 2019. It has gone triple platinum and won Single of the Year at the Academy of Country Music Awards last week. The song’s official video has been viewed more than 114M times on YouTube alone. (you can watch it below the story.)

Thompson and Shelton executive produce the TV adaptation with Narvel Blackstock (Blake Shelton’s Not So Family Christmas) and Laurie Pozmantier. Universal TV is the studio.

The Fast and the Furious co-writer Thompson was creator, writer, and executive producer of the NBC drama series Las Vegas. He also co-developed and executive produced Taxi Brooklyn. Among his upcoming projects are the features Trap House starring Dave Bautista, Man of War currently in pre-production, and Champion at Studio 8. Thompson is repped by Paradigm, Fourth Wall Management, and Paul Hastings.

Shelton is a nine-time Grammy award nominee, who has charted 40 singles, including 27 that have reached No. 1. His “Doin’ What She Likes” broke the record for the most consecutive No. 1 singles in the Country Airplay chart’s 24-year history. He has been a judge on NBC’s on The Voice since its inception, and a member of his team has won in seven of 18 seasons.

With their storytelling, country songs land themselves to screen adaptations. A recent example is Netflix’s anthology series Dolly Parton’s Heartstrings, inspired by Parton songs.

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