Madonna is the latest jewel in the crown that has become HBO’s original music programming. The cable company, which has aired successful concerts by ‘N Sync, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, Marc Anthony and numerous others will broadcast Madonna Live: The Drowned World Tour on August 26th.
The broadcast will be Madonna’s third collaboration with HBO, having previously worked together in 1993 for Madonna Live Down Under: The Girlie Show and in 1990 on Madonna Live! Blonde Ambition World Tour 90, which was filmed in France. The Drowned World Tour, behind the release of her 2000 release, Music, is her first outing in eight years.
“The minute she said she was going to tour, I was going to be all over it,” Nancy Geller, senior vice president of HBO Original Programming says. “We feel we’ve been a part of her career, in many ways. That’s a very emotional way to put it, but I just feel she’s been a part of the HBO family.”
The concert will be aired live from one of two of Madonna’s hometown shows in Detroit’s Palace of Auburn Hills venue. “We talked about where would be fun to do it,” Geller says. “Not that once you get inside an arena it looks that different, but we’ve seen New York, we’ve seen Vegas. We’ve been there, done it. This had a little meaning to it and a little bit of an emotional attachment to it.”
In other Madonna news, the singer’s first three albums – Madonna (1983), Like a Virgin (1984) and True Blue (1986) – were reissued this week with a pair of previously unreleased bonus tracks on each album.
Madonna’s Drowned World Tour will traverse Europe through June, before heading to the U.S., where it will launch with performances in Philadelphia on July 21st and 22nd.