NBC Entertainment Chairman Robert Greenblatt told an industry gathering in Los Angeles on Friday that his network is trying to finalize a deal to broadcast a live version of the blockbuster film A Few Good Men.

“I want to do some live plays,” Greenblatt said. “We’re in the early stages of working on a live movie based on Aaron Sorkin’s play A Few Good Men.”

Deals were still being negotiated and nothing has been finalized yet, but that Greenblatt said he envisions the broadcast potentially setting up a music-free companion franchise to the network’s burgeoning annual live musical tradition.

The pivot towards more live entertainment is part of the network’s push to create the kind of event programming that audiences feel they can’t miss.

NBC struck ratings gold last year with its live production of The Sound of Music starring Carrie Underwood, and the network quickly announced plans for a followup this year with a live version of Peter Pan in the hopes that lightning would strike twice.

Allison Williams, star of HBO’s Girls and daughter of NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams landed the title role, alongside Christopher Walken as Captain Hook.

So far the network has only released small bits of creative and promotion, but Greenblatt said they’re filming four musical numbers in costume and on sets this weekend for an upcoming marketing push.

Greenblatt spoke Friday about the challenges of promoting live programming like Pan.

“One of the tricky things is because they’re live you don’t have the shows months in advance, so we have to be careful of how we shoot pieces of the show so viewers don’t think they’re going to see [the promo production values] when they tune in; they’re going to see something eye popping,” Greenblatt said Friday.

While the network is ramping up promo efforts now, the campaign will kick into high gear the night before Thanksgiving with the airing of a behind-the-scenes special that will give viewers a peek into rehearsals and other backstage prep. Greenblatt said he thinks a similar special ahead of The Sound of Music was “the thing that started to move the needle” with audiences last year.

Viewers who weren’t quire sure what to make of the idea saw footage from rehearsals and “started to understand what they were going to see,” Greenblatt said.

He did express some concern that Williams doesn’t have the same social media clout as Underwood and her “six million followers on Twitter” [editor’s note: it’s actually 4.07 million], but said he didn’t think it was the key to Sound of Music‘s ratings success in the first place.

“Unfortunately, we don’t have somebody like Carrie who has that automatic following,” Greenblatt said, “Social media is important, but I don’t think it drove 20 million viewers.”

As for NBC’s overall pivot towards live TV, he said it was simply a fact of life in today’s television landscape, where viewers have an ever-growing list of channels, platforms, and devices offering content.

“I think in order to get the viewers these days you have to do something that feels like an event,” Greenblatt said. “It’s no longer enough just to put on a good show that people want to watch. They have to be compelled to watch it.”

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