Smash, a decade-old musical drama that was on NBC, about a group of singers and dancers hustling to get a Marilyn Monroe musical on stage, is headed to Broadway. Steven Spielberg is producing and Robert Greenblatt, former chairman of NBC Entertainment, is developing. Theresa Rebeck created the show and Neil Meron, an executive producer on the TV series, is producing. 

Susan Stroman is the director. 

The Broadway show is scheduled for the 2024-2025 season. 

Smash lasted for two seasons on NBC, debuting in 2012. The first season saw the characters struggle to bring the Monroe musical, called Bombshell, to stage. In the second season, it was a show called Hit List. 

Smash has retained a cult following despite its cancellation a decade ago. 

Greenblatt told the New York Times the stage production is seen as “a comedy about a musical.” 

Meron has produced NBC’s live stage productions, including The Sound of Music, Peter Pan and Annie Live! ■

Lionsgate said it signed a first-look television deal with Robert Greenblatt, the former top NBC Entertainment and WarnerMedia Entertainment executive.

Under the agreement, Greenblatt will produce television projects for Lionsgate through his new production company, The Green Room.

Greenblatt also announced that Jon Wu will join The Green Room in October as producer and head of filmed content. Wu had been VP of film & television for Reese Witherspoon’s media company, Hello Sunshine.

“I’m proud to welcome Bob to the Lionsgate family,” said Lionsgate CEO Jon Feltheimer. “During the more than 30 years I’ve known him, he has been associated with some of the most iconic television shows in history, and his creative talent relationships and instincts for great IP are second to none. He brings to our television business a major studio and world-class platform perspective that will help to continue driving our growth.”

In addition to NBC and WarnerMedia, where he helped launch HBO Max, Greenblatt has been a top executive at Showtime and Fox.

“I’m honored to join Jon, Kevin, Sandra and the whole Lionsgate family in creating premium content for their expanding television slate,” said Greenblatt. “After working with them on hits like Weeds and Nurse Jackie, this felt like the most fitting and entrepreneurial creative home for my next chapter. I’m awed by their tenacity and track record as visionaries who are passionate about our business. I’m also thrilled to welcome Jon Wu to the new company and I look forward to our collaboration with all of the Lionsgate teams.”

In the wake of a big regulatory victory clearing its purchase of Time Warner, AT&T unveiled a major restructuring that sent two well-respected executives packing, could lead to “significant layoffs” and sets the media giant on a path lined with uncertainty as it tries to reinvent its content business.

AT&T seemed to close out February on a high note, with a federal appeals court rejecting the Justice Department’s second attempt to block the Time Warner merger on Feb. 26. But by Monday, the company had a new head for its WarnerMedia division, industry veteran Robert Greenblatt, and lost two top executives, HBO CEO Richard Plepler and Turner president David Levy.

A third executive, Warner Bros. CEO Kevin Tsujihara, who earlier last week was given added responsibilities in the new corporate structure, is on thin ice after a report surfaced that he had conducted an inappropriate sexual relationship with an actress whom he had pressured Warner casting directors to hire. AT&T said it is investigating the allegations.

AT&T made the Greenblatt hire official on March 4, naming him chairman of WarnerMedia and Direct To Consumer. AT&T plans to launch a third direct-to-consumer offering, in addition to DirecTV Now and AT&T Watch, by the end of the year.

AT&T named CNN Worldwide president Jeff Zucker chairman of WarnerMedia News & Sports, gave added global kids and young adult business responsibilities to Tsujihara and tapped Turner International president Gerhard Zeiler as WarnerMedia’s chief revenue officer.

AT&T Makes Its Mark

The moves were not entirely unexpected. AT&T had been hinting for months after it closed the Time Warner deal in July that its newly acquired content businesses were in need of an overhaul. At a town meeting with HBO employees in June, WarnerMedia CEO John Stankey told workers that the premium channel was in for “a tough year.”

AT&T has said that to compete in the new streaming video, skinny-bundle, on-demand media environment, WarnerMedia needs to drive engagement with consumers. Time Warner should harness the combined power of brands like Turner and HBO under one service to compete on a global scale with the likes of Netflix and Disney. The service, Stankey said, needed hours of engagement per day with consumers, not hours per week.

It will be up to Greenblatt, who has a strong media track record, to bring continuity and stability to the brands. He joined Showtime in 2003 and is credited with bringing in hits like Weeds, Nurse Jackie, Dexter and Shameless, leaving in 2011 to become head of Comcast’s NBC Entertainment. There, Greenblatt inherited a weakened primetime lineup but quickly led a turnaround with hits like The Voice, The Good Place and This Is Us. He left NBC in September.

The departure of Plepler and Levy was nonetheless shocking, given the two executives have had an enviable string of successes at their respective businesses. Plepler, who had been at HBO since 1992, became CEO of the premium channel in 2012 and launched several iconic hits, including Game of Thrones. He has also cultivated a strong relationship with top talent like Oscar-winning director Martin Scorsese, The Sopranos creator David Chase, The Wire creator David Simon and GoT writers David Benioff and D.B. Weiss. Losing Plepler could have an impact on HBO’s ability to attract and keep talent.

Levy took the helm of Turner in 2013 after several successful years at Turner Sports, helping to engineer its landmark deal for “March Madness” — the NCAA men’s college basketball tournament — with CBS in 2010.

There are likely to be more defections in the wake of the shakeup and reports said that there will be “significant layoffs” at both HBO and Turner as AT&T tries to lower costs.

In a blog post, MoffettNathanson principal and senior analyst Craig Moffett said the changes at AT&T are a double-edged sword. On one hand, both Turner and HBO generated tens of millions, maybe hundreds of millions of dollars in excess costs.

“The glass-half full version is that Time Warner needed to be shaken up,” Moffett wrote.

The glass-half empty view, according to Moffett, is that WarnerMedia has set the stage for a major talent drain at the company, just when experienced hands are needed the most.

Read more TCA '16 coverage.

Beverly Hills, Calif. -- NBC Entertainment chairman Bob Greenblatt said during his executive session at TCA summer press tour that a major expansion of the network's OTT offerings is likely a couple of months away.

“I’m not ready to talk about anything definitive, but hopefully in the next couple months we’ll have something to talk about, which could be really exciting," he said. CBS recently announced it has racked up 2 million subscribers to stand-alone services from CBS and Showtime, and ABC last spring dramatically expanded its Watch ABC app's programming.

"We’re in a unique position because our sister company is a cable company and the OTT strategy is a competitive take from what the cable business is," Greenblatt said of Comcast-owned NBCUniversal. "Whatever we do in that space, we want to do something that is not an affront to the cable business or distributors. So we’re trying to craft something that is a good thing for them as well. So we’re not there yet, but hopefully in the very near future we’ll have something to talk about. In the meantime, we’re doing a lot of toe in the water approaches," such as full streaming of Olympic events and targeted SVODs like the comedy-themed Seeso.

Read more atB&C.

Related: Rocking Steady at Showtime | ‘Roadies’ Strikes a Romantic Chord: A Q&A With EP Winnie Holzman

Few executives in the television industry have the experience in the business — or a wit as dry — as Showtime Networks chairman Matt Blank.

Nearly a year after he tapped David Nevins to succeed him as CEO, Blank is settling into the role of chairman just fine. “I barely come to the office anymore,” he said with a straight face on a recent visit, to the guffaws of his public relations chief and two reporters. “My friends ask, ‘How do you know it’s Saturday?’”

At Showtime now for nearly three decades (since 1988) — and at HBO for 12 years before that — Blank is a fixture not only at the company he’s built, but in the industry where he grew up. With a producer’s gut instincts and a comedian’s timing, the affable Blank has earned distinction as a bona fide cable- TV pioneer with a long list of accolades. He remains active on a bevy of boards, from the National Cable & Telecommunications Association to the Manhattan Theatre Club.

When Showtime entertainment president Robert Greenblatt left in 2010 to join NBC, “not only was I looking for a good content person, I was looking for someone who might be a successor,” Blank said. “I looked at David’s shows [Arrested Development and Friday Night Lights among them] and thought, ‘These shows could have been Showtime shows.’” Nevins quickly impressed Blank by shepherding a string of hits, including Homeland, Ray Donovan, Masters of Sex, Penny Dreadful and The Affair.

Nevins had “the experience, the business acumen and the desire … and, over the years, it became clear to me he’s the guy,” Blank said. “He’s been on a fast track.” The two men have become inseparably close, speaking at least twice a day on matters large and small. Says Blank, “He’s family.”

Blank has a theory on the current chaos brought on by new over-the-top players, generational viewing trends and cord-cutting. Over the past several decades, “there was a disequilibrium in the industry,” Blank said, with the “haves” being powerful content giants and distributors, and the “have-nots” being smaller independent producers, networks and programmers. The cable industry was, in effect, a closed system.

“Now, we’re moving into a period of much greater equilibrium,” Blank said. “And David’s content will have a chance to very much stand on its own.”

Blank is still deeply involved with programming decisions and, looking back, he’s most proud of Showtime’s brand and its cast of original deeply flawed but likeable characters — and how they resonate with good long runs. (Dexter and Weeds each ran eight seasons, and Homeland will run at least eight; Nurse Jackie ran seven and Shameless has been renewed for a seventh go-round). The network is now branching out with comedy (I’m Dying Up Here) and with music. Blank is like a proud papa describing Roadies: “It’s a different show for us. It’s not smack you in the face like Ray Donovan. But there is a soul to it.”

He seems hardly concerned at the mention of Netflix, Amazon and other OTT players spending heavily to find the next hit. Showtime is better prepared against all competitors because its monthly subscription business, he said, “travels very well” even direct to consumer.

“OK, so now we’ve got 100 OTT players? Well I grew up in a world where it was just HBO. Then HBO and Turner. Then Showtime,” he said. “It may be easier to have a [platform] now, but it doesn’t make it any easier to be a success.”