Jason Owen Latest Celebrity News & Gossip

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic When Fox’s “Monarch” premiered to strong ratings following an NFL game on Sept. 11, there was a big sort-of-maybe cliffhanger: Can the Susan Sarandon character, touted as a series lead, really be as dead as she appeared to be at the end of the pilot? But there were other questions, too. Like: Will this be a series in which the characters are portrayed as having originated a lot of the big hits of country and pop, from “Family Tradition” to “Man! I Feel Like a Woman” to “Born This Way”? Will the middle American audience be completely down with a story that has an out lesbian character vying to become a country superstar? Do parallels with Naomi Judd’s story feel as eerie as we think they do? And did the pilot make all those millions of viewers want to come back when there’s no NFL lead-in?

Kelsea Ballerini is set to host the 2024 CMT Music Awards for the fourth consecutive year.

Shucked, the pun-filled, corn-fed comedy that surprised critics (favorably) and early on seemed destined to become a sleeper hit, will play its final performance at Broadway‘s Nederlander Theatre on Sunday, January 14, 2024, producers have announced.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic The Loretta Lynn estate has a new manager — Sandbox Succession, a division of Sandbox Entertainment, the Jason Owen-led Nashville company that oversees the careers of such living stars as Kacey Musgraves, Dan + Shay and Kelsea Ballerini. “Loretta Lynn is the original queen of country music, and it is a true privilege that her family has entrusted Sandbox Succession to preserve her precious legacy,” Owen, Sandbox Entertainment’s CEO, said in a statement.

EXCLUSIVE: Shucked, the Broadway musical nominated for nine Tony Awards, will begin a London run on the West End next year, producer and theater owner Cameron Mackintosh announced today.

Puns grow knee-high – and in bawdier moments a bit higher – in Shucked, the new musical comedy that combines the winking hayseed humor of Green Acres and Hee Haw with the decidedly urban, gently subversive camp that peppered the Off Broadway scene in the ’90s with kitschy fare like Ruthless!, The Real Live Brady Bunch and Theatre-A-Go!-Go!’s Valley of the Dolls parody.

Nothing brings people together like music. The 2023 CMT Music Awards will be a star-studded event — not only for the show’s nominees and performers, but also for its presenters.

Bigger in Texas! Kelsea Ballerini and Kane Brown return to host the 2023 CMT Music Awards on Sunday, April 2.

Producers Mike Bosner and Jason Owen announced today that Shucked, a new original musical comedy with a book by Tony winner Robert Horn (Tootsie) and music by Nashville’s hit songwriting team Brandy Clark and Shane McAnally will open on Broadway this spring.

CMT and CBS have set the date for the 2023 CMT Music Awards, airing Sunday, April 2, 2023 live from Austin, Texas’ Moody Center for the first time.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic“Naomi Judd: A River of Time Celebration” was broadcast live on CMT Sunday night two weeks and one day after the country music legend died. But it hadn’t been half that long in the planning. The show’s gestation really came just a week prior to air date, on — appropriately enough — Mother’s Day.

The country music community gathered today at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville to remember one of their own. As it might be expected, the best way to honor and memorialize one of the genre’s greatest hitmakers was found in song.

A public memorial service for 5-time Grammy winner and Country Music Hall of Fame inductee Naomi Judd, who died last week at 76, will air live on CMT this weekend.

Country icon Naomi Judd, who died suddenly at age 76, and her daughter Wynonna are the subjects of the first installment of Icon, an anthology series in the works at Fox that sets out to profile some of the world’s biggest music legends.

EXCLUSIVE: The 2022 CMT Music Awards have added more performers to its inaugural broadcast on CBS.

Justice Secretary Dominic Raab was last night facing serious questions over why his department did not oppose a decision to free the mother of tragic Baby P.

Chris Willman Music WriterSandbox Entertainment president-CEO Jason Owen, one of Nashville’s top management figures, has signed a deal with Sony Music Entertainment’s Premium Content Division to produce long-form film, television and digital projects, with the “definitive” June Carter Cash documentary among the first of their collaborations to be announced.The companies say that over a period of years they plan to develop “a library of projects that tell the stories of music, history, and culture set in the South” — very familiar stomping ground for Owen, a leading figure in Nashville’s music industry who currently helps guide the careers of Kacey Musgraves, Dan + Shay, Little Big Town, Faith Hill and Kelsea Ballerini. The June Carter Cash doc will combine interviews with family members with archival footage culled from “unprecedented access to the Cash estate,” much of it, of course, related to her husband Johnny Cash or her lineage before that as part of the 20th century’s first family of country music.

Chris Willman Music WriterWhen contemporary Nashville artists and songwriters talk about perfect modern country songs, many of them wind up circling around one in particular: the Miranda Lambert-sung “The House That Built Me.” The co-writer of that and other classics over the last few decades, Tom Douglas, is the narrator and subject of a film, “Love, Tom,” just announced as coming out exclusively via the Paramount Plus streaming service on Feb. 24.A trailer for the project has the world-class songwriter appearing in a variety of Nashville locales, including the Ryman Auditorium, the Shelby Street Bridge downtown, a truck and a front porch, as he offers narration derived from a well-remembered, inspirational acceptance speech he gave upon being inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2014.

Former Galavant star Josh Sasse has been tapped as a lead in another music-driven series, Fox’s county music dynasty drama Monarch, which is slated for a midseason launch.

Fox is getting further into the country music scene. The network has handed a series order to Monarch, formerly known as the Untitled Country Music Dynasty drama, from Melissa London Hilfers.

Denise Petski Senior Managing EditorEXCLUSIVE: Fox has put in development Icon, an anthology drama series profiling some of the world’s biggest music legends, from producer Gail Berman and leading country music manager Jason Owen. The first installment will focus on Grammy-winning mother and daughter country music duo Naomi and Wynonna Judd, who will executive produce.

Nellie Andreeva Co-Editor-in-Chief, TVEXCLUSIVE: Fox Entertainment is opening a writers room for its Untitled Country Music Dynasty drama from writer/exec producer Melissa London Hilfers with an eye toward potential straight-to-series order for the 2021-22 season. The decision on the project, exec produced by Gail Berman, Hend Baghdady and leading country music manager Jason Owen, is part of a recalibration of the network’s approach to development.

Reese Witherspoon is bringing a new country music competition series to Apple TV+.

Peter White Television EditorApple is moving into the competition space with a country music talent contest exec produced by Reese Witherspoon.The streamer has ordered My Kind of Country from Witherspoon’s Hello Sunshine, country music manager Jason Owen, and The Masked Singer showrunner Izzie Pick Ibarra.