Netflix’s ‘Building The Band’ series to move forward following Liam Payne’s death

Netflix is reportedly moving forward with its Building The Band series, which involves late One Direction member Liam Payne.

• READ MORE: Liam Payne 1993-2024: One Direction star who helped spark a pop phenomenon

Last summer, Payne joined The Pussycat Dolls’ Nicole Scherzinger and Kelly Rowland of Destiny’s Child as a judge on Building The Band, a new band competition series from Netflix. The series was filmed in completion over the summer, but was in its post-production process at the time of Payne’s tragic death in October.

Payne died on October 16 last year after falling from a third-floor balcony at the CasaSur Palermo Hotel. The Argentinian prosecutor’s office shared at the time that the cause of death was due to multiple traumas and internal and external bleeding.

Following Payne’s untimely death, production on Building The Band was halted, though Netflix never announced its intentions to scrap the project. Now, per The Hollywood Reporter, Netflix is looking to move forward with its production and is keen on airing the final results.

During a special presentation event in Los Angeles on Wednesday (January 29), Netflix’s vice president of non-fiction series and sports Brandon Riegg shared that conversations are ongoing with Liam Payne’s family on how his involvement will be handled, with more information coming in the “near future”, per The Hollywood Reporter’s sources.

Backstreet Boys’ AJ McLean is also expected to appear in the series, having told TMZ after Payne’s death that they had just finished filming for a TV show together.

Building The Band was first publicly announced in August, seemingly after filming had wrapped. In the Netflix series, musicians will compete to form a band based entirely on merit without ever having met one another – they are able to rehearse together through isolation booths, meaning they can hear each other but not see each other.

A release date for Building The Band has not been announced.

It comes following reports that the remaining members of One Direction may reunite in tribute to Payne at this year’s BRIT Awards.

Earlier this month, a hearing at Buckinghamshire Coroner’s Court confirmed that Payne’s death was the result of “polytrauma”, which refers to multiple traumatic injuries sustained by a body’s organ systems.

Elsewhere, Payne’s friend Roger Nores recently filed a federal defamation lawsuit against the late star’s father for defamation. Nores is one of five people who have been charged in Argentina over the death alongside CasaSur Palermo hotel manager Gilda Martin, reception head Esteban Grassi, Ezequiel Pereyra and Braian Paiz.

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