Though he hasn't released a film since 2013's The Great Gatsby, director Baz Luhrmann hasn't been resting on his probably well-designed laurels. He's been hard at work on a new Netflix series, The Get Down, which features Jaden Smith. The new trailer is below.
The show is set in grungy, gritty, 1970s New York, a much tougher place to live than the law-abiding city it is today... In the South Bronx, a crew of teenagers who have no-one else to turn to find shelter and solace in each other, as they express their own musical abilities at a time when hip-hop, punk and disco are kicking off and pulsing through the culture.
It's an era that fascinated a younger Luhrmann. “Growing up in an isolated town in Australia, I saw New York from a distance as this amazing creative capital with very sophisticated art forms bursting forth," he says. "Yet, it was also a dangerous, and in some ways, broken place in 1977. My first question was a simple one: how did these profound, creative, new gestures come out of this place, this youth, and this geography? So much creativity, so little means. We see so many depictions of the burned out Bronx. But who were these 'kids'? this generation of artists? What great adventure, sense of curiosity, and hope did the adults and the newsreels miss? Fundamentally, this show isn’t simply about the roots of hip-hop or the demise of disco. The ultimate character is childhood – that ‘authentic impulse to action,’ the simple happinesses, and the accidental discoveries that made hip-hop possible.”
The Get Down's cast mixes experienced acting types (Giancarlo Esposito, Jimmy Smits) with a cadre of newer faces including Herizen Guardiola Shameik Moore, Justice Smith, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II and Skylan Brooks. The whole first season kicks off on Netflix on August 12.