A Dolly Parton television movie "Coat of Many Colors," scheduled for some time next season, is the first of a planned franchise of movies based on the country legend's music. The details, though, are fuzzy.
The idea of dramatizing Parton's music, which was announced by NBC this week, came when Parton and NBC Entertainment chairman Robert Greenblatt struck up a friendship while working together on "9 to 5: The Musical" on Broadway earlier this year,
according to Rolling Stone magazine.
"She's just thinking about a lot of things going on in her life and things she's written about, and I had lunch with her a couple of months ago and she said, 'I'd love to see if there's some movies we can develop out of the stories I've been writing about,'" said Greenblatt.
The first movie in the collaboration, "Coat of Many Colors," is sort of a biopic that will focus on Parton's rearing, and in which she sings about the coat her mother stitched together out of rags so she could have a jacket for school,
reported the Wall Street Journal. That coat, which was a source of ridicule to other children, is now in Parton's Chasing Rainbows Museum in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee,.
Billboard magazine's Chris Payne wrote that beyond the announcement, though, little else is known about "Coat of Many Colors" and other possible movies to come out of the project.
"For now, that's about all the details we have," Payne wrote. "No premiere date has been set and the cast has not been named, though NBC Entertainment chairman Bob Greenblatt has noted Parton will produce the series and could even see time on screen."
The country music star's return to television comes full circle after first appearing on the "The Porter Wagoner Show" after she made her radio debut with him at 13, according to Billboard. "Coat of Many Colors" was one of her first hits in 1971 after kicking off her solo career.
People magazine wrote that the song was added to the Library of Congress music registry in 2012.