ASSOCIATED PRESS

LOS ANGELES -- A 12-hour series about the famed Motown Records music empire and its founder, Berry Gordy, is being developed for NBC.

"Berry Gordy's Motown" will dramatize Gordy's rise from Detroit's inner city to the head of an entertainment empire with artists that included Diana Ross and the Supremes, Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, the Temptations and Michael Jackson and the Jackson 5, the network said Thursday.

Producer Suzanne de Passe, whose credits include "Motown Returns to the Apollo," the miniseries "The Temptations" and "The Jacksons: An American Dream," is developing the project with NBC.

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While de Passe is a longtime Gordy associate, she said the NBC effort won't be a sugarcoated version of the label's sometimes fractious and litigious history.

"It's going to be challenging to find the right balance between objectivity and subjectivity," she said.

"It's important that we be as honest and straightforward as possible in presenting the facts as we know them."

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