Jason Owen: Last News

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.