EXCLUSIVE: Neon has acquired the feature adaptation of Craig Marks and Rob Tannenbaum’s oral history I Want My MTV: The Uncensored Story of the Music Video Revolution which Patti Cake$ filmmaker Geremy Jasper is directing from a screenplay he co-wrote with Jim Hecht (Winning Time). Neon picked up the package in a competitive situation.
I Want My MTV follows MTV’s inception and early years through the lens of the visionaries who knew that the future of entertainment was merging music and television. While the film is set within the framing of 1980-1985, the project is billed as a timely story of invention and survival in an ever-changing media landscape, especially as MTV recently shut down its last remaining music-only channels.
“I was part of the first generation raised on MTV – it was my radio and film school in one. Jim and I both worked there between the 90s to early 2000s, and it is even where I met my wife, Georgie. So, I was instantly hooked on Rob and Craig’s book, which is an insane, hilarious, inspiring ride through ‘80s ambition, excess, and rock ’n’ roll rebellion. I am grateful they trusted us to adapt it. And there’s no better partner than Neon as they’ve got the same fearless, visionary energy that made MTV a pop culture force,” said Jasper.
As his third project with Jasper, Noah Stahl will produce through Cinetic Media alongside Riva Marker of Linden Productions and Barnstorm’s Glen Powell and Dan Cohen. Eva Maria Daniels is also onboard as an EP. Casting is underway.
Jasper’s debut feature film, Patti Cake$, was a breakout hit at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival, which was acquired by Searchlight. The movie went on to play that year’s Cannes Film Festival Directors’ Fortnight. Jasper wrote all the movie’s original songs, which were released as a soundtrack album via Republic Records. The film was nominated for a DGA Award and an Independent Spirit Award. Jasper then went on to re-team with Searchlight for post-apocalyptic musical drama O’dessa, starring Sadie Sink, which was released on Hulu in 2025. As a co-founder of the production company LEGS, Jasper co-directed VMA-nominated videos for Florence + The Machine’s Dog Days Are Over and Selena Gomez’s Love You Like a Love Song. His direction for the Target Kaleidoscopic Fashion Spectacular, a 20-minute live event which transformed New York’s Standard Hotel into a giant light board with over one hundred dancers, won a TED Prize, the prestigious Gold Outdoor Lion at the 2011 Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity, and an induction into MoMA’s permanent collection. The director is repped by WME, Range Media Partners and Johnson Shapiro Slewett & Kole.
Hecht is a writer and producer, widely known for Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty (2022) and the Ice Age movies. He most recently worked on AppleTV+’s limited series The Big Cigar (2024), which follows The Black Panther Party’s founder Huey P. Newton’s life – following the public figure who escaped to Cuba to avoid prosecution for murder with the help of Bert Schneider, the Hollywood producer behind Easy Rider, as well as a few other celebrity radicals. Hecht is repped at UTA, Range Media Partners and Del Shaw Moonves Tanaka Finkelstein Lezcano Bobb & Dang.
Marks is the executive editor of HITS magazine. He has served as a top editor at the Los Angeles Times, Billboard, Blender and Spin magazines, and has contributed to The New York Times, New York, GQ and various other publications. Tannenbaum has been a contributing editor at GQ, Rolling Stone, Details, and Playboy. He was the music editor of Blender and has written for the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Vanity Fair, New York, the Village Voice, and other places. He’s currently writing a book with John Leguizamo about Latino history and culture. Marks & Tannenbaum are repped by UTA on behalf of PJ Mark at Janklow & Nesbit Associates.
Neon has a heavy duty lineup heading into Cannes with such films in competition as James Gray’s Paper Tiger, Arthur Harari’s The Unknown, Cristian Mungiu’s Fjord, Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s All of a Sudden, Hirokazu Koreeda’s Sheep in the Box, and Na Hong-Jin’s Hope. In Directors’ Fortnight: Clarissa, a modern reimagining of Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, and David Greaves’ Once Upon a Time in Harlem. Rounding out the slate, Nicolas Winding Refn’s Her Private Hell which is screening out of competition and opens on July 24. Neon is also opening Boots Riley’s I Love Boosters on May 22 which made its world premiere at Cannes.