Film and television have spent decades mining intellectual property from almost every imaginable source, and the range of successful adaptations keeps expanding. Novels become movies and series - The Godfather, Gone Girl, Big Little Lies, Normal People - while comic books have grown into enormous franchises. Podcasts have become limited series and prestige television, as happened with Dirty John, Dr. Death, and The Dropout. Video games, once treated as notoriously difficult to adapt, now underpin major television projects such as The Last of Us and Fallout. Magazine and newspaper journalism has repeatedly become feature-film source material, from Argo and Hustlers to A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, while toys and consumer products have generated everything from Transformers to Barbie. Even theme-park attractions have become film franchises; Pirates of the Caribbean is probably the most famous example.
What strikes me is how comparatively underdeveloped one particular source of IP remains: songs.
I do not mean songs used as soundtrack, songs licensed into a scene, or jukebox musicals built around an artist’s catalog. I mean songs functioning as the underlying story world itself.
There are precedents. Ode to Billy Joe became a feature film, Convoy became a film, Harper Valley PTA became both a movie and television property, and Kenny Rogers’ The Gambler became a television movie that ultimately grew into a multi-film franchise. More recently, Dolly Parton’s Heartstrings used individual songs as the basis for anthology episodes.
The idea is not new. What seems underdeveloped is the system around it.
We already have sophisticated machinery for discovering books that could become films. Producers track publishing deals, agencies circulate manuscripts, studios option novels before publication, and executives maintain relationships with publishers specifically to identify adaptable IP. We increasingly do the same with podcasts, games, graphic novels, online communities, and creator brands.
Imagine applying that same level of intentionality to music.
Imagine someone hearing John Mellencamp’s “Jack & Diane” not merely as a four-minute song, but as the first four minutes of a movie. Who are Jack and Diane beyond the lyric? What town do they live in, what did their families expect from them, what happened the summer before the song began, and what becomes of them when teenage certainty collides with adulthood? The song gives us only fragments, but those fragments already contain character, setting, class, aspiration, nostalgia, tension, and an emotional world. That is precisely why people have carried the song with them for decades.
The larger question is why this kind of adaptation is not happening much more systematically.
Songs are compressed story engines
Some songs are essentially miniature screenplays because they contain characters, conflict, place, dramatic turns, point of view, stakes, atmosphere, and often an ending. Country, folk, Americana, blues, gospel, and Southern songwriting traditions are particularly rich in this form because narrative songwriting has always been central to those genres.
A strong story song may introduce a stranger, reveal a secret, collapse a marriage, send a child away from home, document a crime, capture a town’s mythology, or place a character at the moment of an irreversible choice. Sometimes the songwriter resolves the story; sometimes the song ends with a mystery, and that ambiguity can actually make it more adaptable because a screenwriter has room to expand rather than simply reproduce.
The song supplies the emotional DNA. The film or series builds the larger body around it.
The precedent is stronger than it first appears
Hollywood has experimented with song-to-screen adaptation before, and the results suggest the idea is more viable than the industry usually treats it.
The 1976 film Ode to Billy Joe expanded Bobbie Gentry’s famous narrative song into a feature story. Harper Valley PTA moved from song to film and then into television. The Gambler is even more instructive because the adaptation did not stop with one movie; Kenny Rogers’ Brady Hawkes grew into a recurring television character across multiple films, demonstrating that a song can contain enough character and mythology to seed an ongoing screen property.
Dolly Parton’s Heartstrings offers a more contemporary model. Rather than adapting an artist’s biography or simply licensing a catalog, the series treated individual songs as narrative source material, which is much closer to the model I think Nashville could build intentionally.
These examples prove the concept. What they do not yet represent is an organized industry pipeline.
Nashville may be uniquely positioned to build that pipeline
Nashville possesses something unusual because it does not simply have a music industry; it has an enormous concentration of story IP already expressed through music.
Songs sit inside catalogs controlled by publishers, songwriters, artists, estates, labels, and rights companies, and many of those songs contain recognizable characters, worlds, themes, conflicts, and premises with adaptation potential. Some are famous, but many are not, and commercial success may not correlate neatly with screen potential.
A chart-topping song has obvious recognition value, yet an obscure album cut, demo, gospel song, folk ballad, regional song, or older catalog composition may contain a far more compelling dramatic premise.
That is what makes Nashville interesting as an origin market.
We already talk extensively about sync and how to get Nashville music into film and television. That is valuable, but it usually treats the song as a licensable component of someone else’s story.
The more ambitious question is: What stories can film and television build from Nashville music?
That moves music upstream in the value chain. Instead of asking whether a song can be placed in a show, we ask whether the song can generate the show.
This is different from a jukebox musical
A jukebox musical generally begins with an artist’s catalog and constructs a narrative around multiple songs. A song-to-screen pipeline could work very differently because one song might become a feature film, limited series, anthology episode, animated project, holiday movie, podcast drama, stage work, or the foundation of a larger fictional world.
The original recording might play a central role, or it might appear only over the credits.
The purpose is not necessarily to showcase the catalog. It is to recognize the narrative intellectual property embedded within the catalog. That changes the development conversation entirely.
What would a Nashville Song-to-Screen pipeline actually look like?
I could imagine a structured initiative sitting at the intersection of Nashville’s music and screen industries. Call it, for now, Nashville Song to Screen.
The first step would be catalog discovery. Participating publishers, songwriters, artists, estates, and other rights-holders could submit songs they believe have strong narrative adaptation potential.
Those songs would not be judged primarily by commercial performance. They would be evaluated for character, world, conflict, premise, visual potential, emotional stakes, cultural specificity, and expandability.
A multidisciplinary review group could include songwriters, screenwriters, producers, rights experts, music publishers, and development executives, with the goal of identifying songs that contain enough narrative architecture to merit deeper exploration.
Rights would have to come first
The idea only works if rights are handled seriously from the beginning because songs can involve multiple forms of ownership and multiple stakeholders. The composition may be controlled by one or several publishers, songwriting shares may be divided among multiple writers, the master recording may belong to a label or artist, and the song may reference real people.
An adaptation may also require rights that are entirely distinct from synchronization or master-use licenses.
For that reason, a credible Song-to-Screen pipeline should begin with rights triage, not creative development. Before a producer spends months building a concept, the parties should understand who controls the composition, who can authorize dramatic adaptation, whether all writers are aligned, whether the title is usable, whether the original master is needed, whether life-rights or defamation issues exist, what derivative rights would be granted, and which rights the songwriter would retain.
That legal and structural clarity is not a side issue. It is the infrastructure that determines whether an interesting concept can actually become a project.
Then comes story development
Once the rights position is clear, a selected song could move into a short development lab, but the first goal should not be to commission a full screenplay. That is expensive and premature.
A better initial output would be a concise adaptation package containing the dramatic premise, principal characters, setting, world, tone, themes, potential format, the relationship between the original song and the expanded story, and a short treatment.
Some songs will reveal themselves as features. Others may work better as limited series or anthology episodes, and some will not survive the expansion process at all. A development system should eliminate weak adaptations early rather than forcing every piece of source material into production.
Pair songwriters with screenwriters
One of the most interesting possibilities is deliberately pairing Nashville songwriters with professional screenwriters because the two forms solve opposite problems. Songwriters are masters of compression. They can establish character, world, and emotion in a handful of lines. Screenwriters are masters of expansion. They must sustain character, conflict, and momentum across ninety minutes or multiple episodes.
That difference could create unusually productive collaborations while also connecting two Nashville creative communities that do not always operate inside the same professional ecosystem.
The songwriter may know backstory that never made the lyric. The screenwriter may see structural possibilities the songwriter never considered. The collaboration could preserve the emotional core of the song while allowing the story to grow into something genuinely new.
Publishers could become IP studios
This may be the most consequential business implication.
Music publishers traditionally monetize compositions through performance, mechanical royalties, synchronization, licensing, and related uses, but a catalog can also be understood as a library of narrative concepts. Publishers could become far more systematic about identifying adaptation-ready songs and partnering with producers capable of developing them.
For a publisher, a successful adaptation could create multiple layers of value. The underlying song may receive renewed attention, catalog streams may increase, the composition may be licensed into the finished project, other songs from the catalog may be used, a soundtrack may emerge, the songwriter may participate economically in adaptation rights, and the publisher may develop repeat relationships with producers.
One successful adaptation can change how the entire catalog is perceived. Book publishers learned this lesson long ago: the primary work can also be source material. Music publishing could treat catalogs in the same way.
Nashville could create an annual Song-to-Screen market
The initiative could eventually culminate in a curated marketplace featuring perhaps 10 to 20 selected properties rather than a large general conference.
Each project package could include the song, rights status, writer/rightsholder information, a short treatment, format recommendation, visual materials, and perhaps an attached screenwriter or producer.
The audience would be film and television producers, streamers, studios, independent financiers, production companies, agents, managers, broadcasters, international co-production partners, and, where relevant, entertainment brands.
The event would function less like a songwriting showcase and more like an IP market.
Nashville would no longer simply be showing the industry its music. It would be showing the industry its stories.
The economics could compound across sectors
The economic-development argument goes well beyond royalties.
If a Nashville song becomes the underlying IP for a film or television property and Nashville participants retain meaningful rights, value can flow through several parts of the local entertainment economy at once. The songwriter may earn adaptation income, the publisher may participate, a Nashville producer may become attached, a local screenwriter may work on development, Nashville musicians may contribute to the score or soundtrack, local studios may record material, and the production itself may ultimately shoot in Tennessee.
Tourism opportunities could follow, catalog activity could increase, and derivative properties might emerge later. One piece of IP can therefore activate multiple parts of the entertainment ecosystem. That is exactly what a cross-medium strategy should try to accomplish.
It could also strengthen Tennessee production
One of the recurring challenges for smaller production markets is that they compete for projects generated elsewhere.
A Song-to-Screen pipeline creates locally originated projects with a natural reason to remain connected to Nashville.
If the source song, songwriter, publisher, producer, music ecosystem, and perhaps talent are already here, Tennessee is no longer merely a location bidding for the shoot. It becomes the project’s home ecosystem.
That does not guarantee production will happen locally, because financing and creative requirements will still determine where a project is made. It does, however, change Nashville’s leverage.
The project originates here.
This should not be limited to famous songs
The obvious temptation would be to start with giant hits because they come with built-in recognition, but some of the richest opportunities may sit much deeper in the catalog.
A famous song carries expectations. An obscure song may provide extraordinary source material with far more creative freedom.
Imagine a publisher opening fifty years of catalog and asking not which songs streamed the most, but which songs contain a world. Which have characters we want to know more about? Which end with unanswered questions? Which could sustain another medium? Which evoke a place so strongly that we can already see it? Which contain mystery, conflict, humor, history, or cultural specificity?
That exercise alone could surface remarkable material.
The region’s storytelling tradition matters
This is where Nashville and the broader South may have a genuine advantage.
Narrative songwriting is deeply embedded in country, folk, Americana, gospel, blues, and related traditions, all of which have long preserved stories about family, work, faith, violence, love, class, migration, place, injustice, humor, death, and survival.
Those songs contain characters, communities, moral conflicts, geography, vernacular, and memory. In other words, they contain screen material.
The goal should not be to manufacture another cliché of Southern life. It should be to recognize that one of the country’s richest repositories of compressed narrative IP already sits inside music catalogs.
A pilot could be surprisingly small
Nashville would not need a multimillion-dollar institution to test the idea.
A first pilot could involve five publishers or rights-holders, perhaps 20 to 30 submitted songs, a small rights and development panel, five selected songs, five short adaptation treatments, a handful of producer meetings, and one industry showcase.
The important thing would be to measure what happens. Do producers request material? Do rights deals emerge? Which kinds of songs translate best? Where do legal problems arise? What do publishers learn? What do songwriters want?
The first goal would not be five productions. It would be proving that there is adaptable IP hiding in plain sight.
The public-sector role should be catalytic
The public role could be to convene publishers, songwriters, producers, lawyers, screenwriters, financiers, distributors, universities, and the Tennessee Entertainment Commission; help build the pathway; identify missing infrastructure; connect Nashville to outside production companies and screen agencies; support rights and adaptation education; and measure the economic outcomes.
Government can help build the market infrastructure.
Imagine the catalog differently
The most important shift may simply be conceptual.
A music catalog is usually understood as a collection of compositions. What if we also saw it as a library of characters, worlds, premises, conflicts, mysteries, relationships, history, and emotional IP?
Then the question changes. Instead of asking, Can we get this song into a movie?, we begin asking, Is there already a movie inside this song?
Or a television series, a stage work, a podcast, or another form we have not yet imagined.
That is what cross-medium entertainment development really means. It is not merely putting musicians and filmmakers in the same room; it is recognizing that intellectual property can move between forms, then building the infrastructure that allows that movement to happen intentionally.
Nashville is already extraordinarily good at producing stories in three and a half minutes. The opportunity is to become equally good at asking what those stories might become next.
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