Wheelhouse Entertainment adapts Dead and Gone podcast for television

US prodco Wheelhouse Entertainment has teamed up with documentary filmmaker Joe Berlinger to adapt podcast Dead and Gone into a scripted TV series.

Joe Berlinger (photo: Henny Garfunkel)

The Dead and Gone podcast, from content companies Tenderfoot TV and Double Elvis, explores cases of murdered and missing ‘Deadheads’ – fans of US rock band the Grateful Dead – over the past five decades.

Wheelhouse will adapt season one of the podcast into a scripted TV series, with Berlinger producing and directing.

Exec producing are Wheelhouse’s chief creative officer Scott Lonker, Double Elvis co-founders Jake Brennan and Brady Sadler, and Tenderfoot TV co-founders Donald Albright and Payne Lindsey.

The first season of the podcast was originally set to investigate multiple cases but took an unexpected turn to focus solely on one investigation when Lindsey discovered the case likely involved a man who was wrongfully convicted.

Berlinger said: “As a former Deadhead, lifelong music fan and crime-and-justice filmmaker, I thought I died and went to heaven when listening to Payne and Jake’s meticulously researched podcast.

“Dead and Gone is an incredible weave of music history, social justice and active true crime investigation – three areas I have been lucky enough to explore in most of my past work as a filmmaker.

“There is so much potential here to not only immerse viewers in the iconic world of the Grateful Dead and their itinerant, dedicated fans, but to also dissect a troubling story of potential wrongful conviction, a story that is infused with a compelling mystery that surrounds the entire case even to this day.”