Eleven years ago, NBC delivered one of the most memorable moments in upfront presentation history when the head of the network, Robert Greenblatt, sat behind the piano to accompany Dolly Parton‘s performance of “I Will Always Love You.” Following Parton’s death at the age of 80, the former top Showtime, NBC and WarnerMedia executive Greenblatt recalled how that stunt came about and reflected on the duo’s 23-year friendship that started when he approached her about turning her classic movie 9 to 5 into a musical. Greenblatt executive produces HBO Emmy-nominated hit The Gilded Age and just won his fourth Tony Award for Ragtime.

The loss of Dolly Parton is profound. A wound that people all over the world are feeling. It’s as if collectively we lost a guiding light in the middle of a storm, someone who could bring simple common sense to the chaos of life. She was a prolific songwriter and a galvanizing performer who somehow appealed to literally everyone, whether you liked country music or not. But to me she was a beautiful human being all about love, and just being able to call her a friend is something for which I will always be eternally grateful.

Back in 2003 when I was about to take over running Showtime, I had decided to also put my mind to producing a Broadway musical someday. I loved musicals as a teenager back home in Illinois and Broadway had always been a dream. And I thought the classic movie 9 To 5 could make a great musical. Not only is it hilarious and empowering to women, but it also has that incredible title song by Dolly herself. So to me it was inherently “musical” already.

My big idea was to somehow get Dolly to write the score for the show. But getting her on board would prove a little more difficult than I thought. After my first letter to her lawyer went unanswered, I assumed she had no interest in Broadway. But then fate — and my friend, Melissa Etheridge — stepped in. Turns out she and Dolly were about to work on a TV special together and Melissa offered to introduce me to her if I dropped into rehearsal.

“Dolly,“ Melissa said, “I want you to meet a great producer and friend of mine, Bob Greenblatt.” As Dolly shook my hand warmly, I stammered something like: “It’s such a pleasure to meet you, I’m a huge fan and I want to produce a Broadway musical based on 9 To 5 and I want you to write the score.” She looked at me for a second and then a little lightbulb went off — “Oh you’re Bob Greenblatt. My lawyer told me about you. I love this idea, and I want to do it. He’ll call you to work out all the details and I’ll see you real soon.” She went back to rehearsal and I had my composer!

In less than a year I was sitting with Dolly in Nashville along with writer Pat Resnick (who also wrote the movie), and we all got to work on crafting the show. We embarked on the joyous process alongside director Joe Mantello, my good friend from high school, who at the time was just about to open a new show on Broadway called Wicked. (We all know how that turned out!)

What fun we all had together! I fondly remember the times we would gather at my home in Los Angeles, and needless to say, Dolly was always camera-ready — wig, full makeup, and five-inch stilettos. Even for just a work session in jeans and a sweater, that sweater had more sparkle than anything you’ve ever seen. If we needed a new song, she would write it overnight and play it for us on her guitar the next day. She wrote a couple dozen songs in all, always eager to throw something out that didn’t quite work and start over if need be. No one ever worked faster — or harder — than Dolly Parton!

It eventually was time for our pre-Broadway run at the Ahmanson Theatre in Los Angeles in 2008 with an incredible cast led by Allison Janney (in the Lily Tomlin role), Stephanie J. Block (Jane Fonda), and newcomer Megan Hilty (as Dolly). Dolly was crazy about all of them. But the automation for our lavish set was so complicated that it didn’t always work and rehearsals were slow. Dolly sat out in the darkened theatre and would sometimes call out a funny comment in the middle of a scene to ease the pressure. She also knew that I had a sweet tooth and would sometimes bring us homemade fudge, just one of the many kind gestures from the little country girl at heart. We all cherished our time with her.

Opening night in L.A. finally arrived and the curtain went up to monstrous applause! We got a full 15 minutes into act one before we had set troubles and had to stop the show and bring up the house lights. Mortified, I ran backstage to see how long it would take to get started again. Unfortunately it was going to be at least ten minutes, and then came the awful sound of hammers and drilling that bled through the curtain. That’s when I ran to Dolly and asked her if she would get up in front of the audience to distract everyone until we could get the show running again.

To resounding applause, she “distracted” the hell out of the audience with her inimitable charm and wit. After many people shouted out their love for her, she explained that we were still “workin’ out some of the bugs” and then she led everyone in a sing-along chorus of 9 To 5. With still more time to kill, she sang “I Will Always Love You” acapela to a crowd that was in heaven.

The rest of the show went without a hitch, but you can imagine that the buzz at the opening night party was all about Dolly, Dolly, Dolly! This kind of thing only happens in live theatre, but if your set is going to break down, there’s nothing better in the world than having a national treasure get up and take control of the room.

Next we were on to a thrilling opening night on Broadway that I’ll never forget, with Dolly accompanied by both Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin. She performed on the Tony Awards that season with our whole company and I’m proud to say she was a first-time Tony nominee for her wonderful score. Every step of the way she was there with her positive disposition and that bright light, bringing everyone into her orbit of love.

A few years later, after I went to NBC, I wanted more Dolly. So we produced a television movie with her and Sam Haskell about a young girl growing up in the Tennessee mountains finding her voice as a young singer. It was inspired by her iconic song “Coat of Many Colors” and I asked her to join me on stage at the NBC upfront at Radio City Music Hall to get the advertisers excited about it. I knew they would all go wild seeing her there, but I wanted to up the ante even more and asked if she would sing something too. She agreed, on one condition — that I accompany her on the piano as I sometimes did at my house when we were working on 9 To 5. How could this kid from the cornfields of Illinois say no to that kind of pipe dream?

On the day of the upfront she appeared wearing a bedazzled, form-fitting dress in “peacock” colors and we bantered about the movie. Then I asked her if she would sing for us before departing and, on cue, a 9-foot Steinway grand appeared. With me (nervously) at the piano, she proceeded to deliver a beautiful rendition of her signature song, “I Will Always Love You,” and the audience was putty in her hands. By the end, she had the whole room singing along with her. It’s a moment I’ll never forget. She was the pied piper in rhinestones who had cast a spell over everyone. What joy it was to be under that spell.

I had many wonderful times with this great lady over the years, and I cherish each one. Now, more than ever I suppose. She was such a radiant life force that fans of every kind adored her — young, old, male, female, gay, straight, democrat, republican, you name it. I think she was the great equalizer because she simply treated everyone equally. She was plain-talking, truthful, inclusive, spiritual, hilarious, and fundamentally just a believer in the power of human goodness.

There was never anyone like Dolly Parton before she came along, and I don’t think we’ll ever see the likes of her again. As they say, God broke the mold after creating her. Over the last two days countless people have said she was simply an angel on Earth. I don’t think truer words were ever spoken.

Rest in Peace, Dear Dolly. We will always love you.

Most of the time, if a movie plays well at a festival and proves itself a crowdpleaser, a distributor will snap it up. Last Labor Day Weekend, Oscar-winner Orlando von Einsiedel (“White Helmets”) was thrilled when his documentary “The Cycle of Love” wowed Telluride audiences. The same was true at Middleburg and other festivals.

The movie is a truth-is-stranger-than-fiction heart-tugger about a Dalit sketch artist (P.K. Mahanandia) who in 1977 enjoys a halcyon summer of love in New Delhi with a Swedish tourist (Lotta von Schedvin), who doesn’t care about his low caste. After she returns home, the smitten young man sells his possessions to buy a bike and pedals 6,000 miles to find her. He supports himself along the route by trading his drawings of people for food. The bicycle odyssey takes four months and three weeks.

Von Einsiedel was giving a speech in Sweden at a Nobel Peace Prize event when two young people came up to him, handed him a book, and said, “We know your work, and this is our parents’ story.” He eventually picked up the book and saw the cinematic possibilities. He met with P.K. and Lotta in their house deep in the Swedish woods. On their first meeting, the mid-70s P.K. did a headstand. “I fell head over heels in love,” said von Einsiedel on Zoom. “They are the most open, warm, generous people. I wanted to spend the next few years surrounded by them, sharing their story.”

The movie, a rare nonfiction romance, uses every tool in the documentary arsenal to make the story fly. (Except AI.) Von Einsiedel shot most of this extended road movie over seven weeks in India and Sweden, using India to sub for more than a dozen locations (including Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Turkey, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Germany, and Austria) on the “hippie trail” from New Delhi to Borås, Sweden.

The skeleton crew roughed it from the Himalayas to the desert in Rajasthan and the jungle in Odisha. The filmmaker hired an actor (Chirag Lobo) to play the young P.K., but shot the reenactments like a documentary, pitting the actor against real people in real time.

“Nothing is scripted,” said von Einsiedel. “Everything is from the actors themselves. Everything is improvised, and all the other people we meet along the way, they’re communities of Afghans, Iranians, and Turks. Everywhere we’d go, we would find normal everyday people, and we’d street cast people in the morning and tell everybody, ‘An actor is recreating a journey from 50 years ago. Would you come and have your portrait drawn and have a chat?’ And then we’d let the camera roll. A lot of the actor’s job was to listen to people talking about hopes and dreams and love and marriage.”

The mature P.K.’s charming narration fuels the movie. “If somebody’s going to carry a film, they’ve got to have charisma, be a raconteur to some degree,” said the director. “And he has that in droves. That’s one of the key reasons he survived and could do this journey because, despite language and cultural differences, he charmed everyone he met. He inspired them, and people wanted to help him. They wanted him to stay with them. They believed in the love story, and they wanted to champion him and make sure he made it safely across the world.”

So why the long gestation? Netflix, which released the Oscar-winning short “White Helmets” and feature “Virunga,” wasn’t on Einsiedel’s distributor wish list because he wanted a theatrical release. Many established theatrical distributors are also wary of the current depressed market for documentaries.

“Docs have not had a robust acquisition market for a few years because of the double whammy of declining box office and streamers saying no one watches docs on their platforms with the exception of celebrity, music and true crime,” wrote one veteran distribution executive in an email. “If you do a U.S. box office chart of 2023-2026 theatrical docs, it’s pretty sad. After a few music docs, ‘Am I Racist’ and ‘Melania,’ and a couple of docs around angry Middle East topics, almost nothing. ‘Cookie Queens’ got to 600K, which was a feat.” 

The Telluride response gave the filmmakers the confidence to pursue a theatrical release. Einsiedel, UK distributor and global sales outfit Dogwoof, and his producers took the time to raise enough funding to support a theatrical North American release via service distributor Variance. The movie is booked worldwide, but other openings will follow the U.S.

“There are challenges,” said von Einsiedel. “We also turned down some opportunities because we wanted to fight for a theatrical. From the beginning, it always felt that we wanted people to experience this in the cinema. It’s a lot of work to make that happen, and we spent the last 12 months since Telluride raising money. We’ve had to learn as a team to build the right coalition of partners to raise the finance.”

Variance president and founder Dylan Marchetti plans a long run in theaters starting at New York’s Angelica on August 28. Von Einsiedel will do Q&As (with surprise guests) in New York, followed by Los Angeles and San Francisco, and in September and October the movie will hit another 20-30 markets, including Boston and Seattle. “It’s a beautiful romantic universal story,” said Marchetti. “People who see this will tell other people to see it. When you start with a film like this, word of mouth escapes. Coolidge Corner will unlock Amherst Cinema. We will take time with it and give people time to talk.”

The filmmakers have also hired established Oscar campaign veteran Chris Albert (Oscar-nominated “Porcelain War”) and 42West to push the film with documentary voters. If enough people see it, it’s a surefire Oscar contender.

“This is a film which cuts across politics,” said von Einsiedel. “I wanted to tell a positive, joyful story. I’ve spent a career making docs about what I believe are important, urgent issues, and always, that will exist as a reason to make documentaries. But why can’t docs be about happiness and joy? Love is something everybody can agree on. All you need is love.”

“The Cycle of Love” opens August 28 from Variance Films.

EXCLUSIVE: Two months after BET+ was folded into Paramount+, with its programming migrating to the larger streamer, four of the former BET+ original series have been renewed by Paramount+. They include Tyler Perry’s Divorced Sistas, picked up for Season 3, and Zatima (Season 6), as well as Carl Weber’s The Black Hamptons (Season 3) and The Family Business (Season 7).

Divorced Sistas and Zatima‘s orders are for 16 episodes, which is typical for Perry shows, running in two eight-episode installments. That has been the pattern for Divorced Sistas while Zatima‘s seasons to date have consisted of 20 episodes, split in two batches of 10.

That includes upcoming seasons of both series that had not been announced but had been quietly filming: a 20-episode fifth season of Zatima, and 16-episode second season of Divorced Sistas. The latter, a spinoff from Perry’s popular BET series Sistas, last summer logged the most watched series premiere on BET+.

The Family Business and The Black Hamptons’ pickups are for 10 episodes each. They are somewhat surprising given the large gap between seasons, especially for The Black Hamptons, whose renewal comes more than two and a half years after the series’ eight-episode second season ended its run on BET+. The Family Business‘ 10-episode sixth season released its finale on Dec. 18 last year. It is possible that the renewals have been done unofficially awhile ago and are now being announced.

The pickups for Divorced Sistas, Zatima, The Family Business and The Black Hamptons join the March Season 6 renewal for for BET+ original comedy Ms. Pat Show, which was done ahead of BET+’s slate transition to Paramount+ in June.

‘We feel the migration was very successful, the audiences are showing up for sure, Paramount+ Head of Originals Jane Wiseman told Deadline last week, noting that the volume of originals that BET+ was known for is not going to go down now that the shows are on Paramount+.

The integration of BET+ into Paramount+ involved Paramount buying out Tyler Perry Studios’ stake in BET+. He remains one of Paramount’s most prolific creators/producers across BET and Paramount+.

“Our relationship with Tyler Perry is very strong, and I’m excited for more content from him, as well as working closely with our friends at BET Studios,” Wiseman said last week.

BET Studios also works across Divorced Sistas, Zatima, The Family Business and The Black Hamptons.

Here are details on the newly renewed series:

Title: The Black Hamptons
Season: 3
EPs: Carl Weber, ND Brown Jones, Trey Haley
Logline: In this adaptation of Carl Weber’s novel, the Britton family faces high tensions with the newly arrived Johnsons in the upscale Black town of Sag Harbor, NY.
Talent: Lamman Rucker, Vanessa Bell Calloway, Elise Neal, Brian White, Karon Riley, and Mike Merrill
Episode count: 10 Eps

Title: The Family Business
Season: 7
EPs: Carl Weber, ND Brown Jones, Trey Haley, Ernie Hudson
Logline: The wealthy Duncans run their lucrative New York-based criminal enterprise with iron fists, and family always comes first.
Talent: Ernie Hudson, Valarie Pettiford, Darrin Dewitt, Javicia Leslie, Tami Roman, Sean Ringgold, Michael Jai White, Arrington Foster and Lisa Raye McCoy.
Episode count: 10 Eps

Title: Tyler Perry’s Divorced Sistas
Season: 3
EPs: Created, directed, written and executive produced by Tyler Perry.
Logline: What begins as one confession cracks open everything this group of women thought they were protecting. Years of deception, half-truths, and emotional compromises finally surface, forcing Rasheda, Geneva, Naomi, Tiffany, and Bridgette to confront not just the men in their lives, but one another.
Talent: LeToya Luckett, Khadeen Indréa, Porscha Coleman, Briana Price, Jennifer Sears, DeVon Franklin, Ronreaco Lee, and Robert Christopher Riley.
Episode count: 16 Eps

Title: Tyler Perry’s Zatima
Season: 6
EPs: Created and executive produced by Tyler Perry.
Logline: Revelations are birthed from misunderstandings, lessons of love and loss are painstakingly learned, and forgiveness and reconciliation dominate. For Zac and Fatima, the fight to protect their family becomes the center of everything as they learn what it truly takes to hold a life and a future… Together.
Talent: DeVale Ellis, Crystal Reneé Hayslett, Nzinga Imani, Remington Hoffman, Cameron Fuller and Guyviaud Joseph.
Episode count: 16 Eps