Paltrow, McGraw join country music drama

Production set to begin in Jan. in Nashville

By Borys Kit

Dec 2, 2009, 03:10 PM ET

Gwyneth Paltrow, Tim McGraw, Garrett Hedlund and Leighton Meester are set to star in Screen Gems’ country singing drama “Love Don’t Let Me Down,” which Shana Feste wrote and is directing.

Tobey Maguire and Jenno Topping are producing via their Maguire Entertainment banner.

In “Love,” Hedlund plays a young rising singer-songwriter who becomes involved with a fallen country singer played by Paltrow. They embark on a career resurrection tour with her husband-manager (McGraw) and a beauty queen-turned-singer (Meester). Romantic entanglements and old demons threaten to derail them all.

Production is set to begin in January 2010 in Nashville.

Screen Gems’ senior vp of production Nick Phillips will oversee the project for the studio.

CAA-repped Feste was the filmmaker behind the 2009 Sundance drama “The Greatest.”

Country singer-turned-occasional actor McGraw, repped by CAA, can be currently seen in “The Blind Side” while Hedlund, repped by WME and Brillstein Entertainment Partners, recently wrapped shooting Disney’s “Tron Legacy.” While McGraw and Hedlund play rivals in “Love,” they were father and son in Universal’s “Friday Night Lights.”

Paltrow, repped by UTA and Brillstein Entertainment Partners, reprises her role as Pepper Potts in next summer’s “Iron Man 2,” while WME and Leverage Entertainment-repped Meester, best known for her work in “Gossip Girl,” is featured in Screen Gems’ “The Roommate,” which opens September 2010.

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