Netflix to get down with Baz Luhrmann on his first 'music-driven' TV drama

The Get Down will focus on the birth of the hip-hop scene in Seventies NYC

Filmmaker Baz Luhrmann is teaming up with Netflix for a Seventies musical drama (Getty)

Baz Luhrmann has been set to work by Netflix on a “music-driven” TV drama focusing on the birth of the New York hip-hop, punk and disco scenes.

Thirteen-part series The Get Down will mark the first time the Moulin Rouge director has ventured into television and be set in the Seventies.

Netflix hints that it will follow a “rag-tag crew of South Bronx teenagers - nothings and nobodies with no one to shelter them except each other - armed only with verbal games, improvised dance steps, some magic markers and spray cans”.

Luhrmann will serve as executive producer with The Shield’s Shawn Ryan, as well as directing the first two episodes and the final one.

“In this golden era of TV, the Netflix culture puts no constraint on creative possibilities. So it is a natural home for a project I have been contemplating and working on now for over 10 years,” said the Oscar-nominated filmmaker.

“Throughout, I’ve been obsessed with the idea of how a city in its lowest moment, forgotten and half destroyed, could give birth to such creativity and originality in music, art and culture”

Luhrmann's announcement follows the news that another big name director, Woody Allen, will be creating his first TV series on Amazon Prime.

The Get Down is set to premiere on the streaming service in 2016 and follows Luhrmann’s 2013 blockbuster, The Great Gatsby.