Jeremy Jordan’s Neil Bogart minces no words about the meteoric rise of Casablanca Records in a new trailer for Spinning Gold.
“We were in the business of making dreams come true,” the label boss says. “Sold over 200 million records. Became the soundtrack of your life. But how do you expect me to tell you how all of that really happened?”
Bogart is right: It’s no small feat chronicling the history of an imprint that went from being “$7 million in debt” to dominating the late-’70s disco zeitgeist by “waging an all-out war against the majors.” But the Spinning Gold trailer teases a slew of Casablanca heavyweights — including Tayla Parx as Donna Summer, Wiz Khalifa as George Clinton and Jason Derulo as Ron Isley — to help bring this saga to the silver screen.
Kiss will also feature prominently in the film, with X Ambassadors frontman Sam Nelson Harris portraying Paul Stanley, All Time Low frontman Alex Gaskarth playing Peter Criss and Casey Likes (who played William Miller in the Broadway adaptation of Almost Famous) embodying Gene Simmons.
“Why did you sign us? You had to know how hard this was gonna be,” Simmons asks Bogart in the trailer, to which the record mogul replies: “Because two kids from Queens had dreams about being the next gods of rock. That is who you are!”
Bogart’s son, Tim Bogart, directed Spinning Gold, which will hit theaters on March 31 — some 12 years after it was first announced. He’d first come up with the idea long before that.
“Born Neil Bogatz in the Brooklyn projects where he plotted his dreams and schemes to escape from poverty, Neil Bogart was my father — and it’s taken me over 20 years to finally tell his story,” Bogart previously told Variety. “And I know people say that all the time, but the first option on the film really was back in 1999.
“From there, through obstacles nearly as challenging as what my father faced in bringing Casablanca Records to the world,” he added, “the obstacles in bringing this film to light were just as daunting.”
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