ACCLAIMED ARTIST NORMAN ROCKWELL'S ICONIC PORTRAYAL OF THE AMERICAN DREAM COMES TO LIFE ON SCREEN WITH "NORMAN ROCKWELL'S SHUFFLETON'S BARBERSHOP", A HALLMARK MOVIE CHANNEL ORIGINAL STARRING FOUR-TIME EMMY(R) NOMINEE DANNY GLOVER AND AUSTIN STOWELL

Film Begins Production with a World Premiere on May 18

Hallmark Movie Channel announces the start of production in Charlotte, North Carolina, for "Norman Rockwell's Shuffleton's Barbershop", a two-hour Hallmark Movie Channel original film. The film was inspired by a painting by celebrated 20th century artist, Norman Rockwell, renowned for his idyllic small-town American scenes that were featured on the cover of The Saturday Evening Post. The story focuses on a big celebrity who revisits his small hometown to reconcile his past with his present, and rediscover the lasting value of family, friends, and fatherhood. Starring four-time Emmy(R) nominee Danny Glover ("The Color Purple", "Lethal Weapon"), Austin Stowell ("The Secret Life of the American Teenager"), and Kayla Ewell ("The Vampire Diaries", "Keeping Up With The Randalls"), "Norman Rockwell's Shuffleton's Barbershop" will have its Hallmark Movie Channel world premiere on Saturday, May 18 (8 p.m. ET/PT, 7C).

When Rockwell's painting fades into the world of Charlie Shuffleton's (Glover) barbershop, this classic piece of Americana becomes the center of a small town in Georgia where friends gather, gossip flows, and age-old memories are kept. Peering in the window, famous country singer Trey Cole (Stowell) is finally returning home after cruelly abandoning the town many years ago and never looking back, even when his brother died serving in the military. Now, realizing he's lost himself along the way, Trey remembers getting his first haircut in the cracked brown leather chair in Charlie's shop, and hopes to find guidance from the man who was a father to him when his own dad, General Wes Cameron (Brett Rice, "Magic City"), was coldly absent during his childhood.

However, as Trey enters the shop and sees Charlie's old friends playing a trio of instruments in the back room, he is surprised when Charlie isn't there and is saddened to hear of his death just a few months prior. With childhood memories flooding his mind about Charlie's constant and loving influence on him as a young boy, Trey knows he must face his own father and the family he hardly knows to honor Charlie's memory and make things right.

Norman Rockwell (1894-1978) was a prolific painter and illustrator in the 20th century, frequently depicting enduring American images with exceptional detail. Born in New York City, he eventually resided in both Vermont and Massachusetts and became nationally renowned for his paintings of nostalgic American life, which frequently appeared on the covers of The Saturday Evening Post for several decades, and featured Rockwell's take on the American ideals of kindness, tolerance, democracy and freedom. Shuffleton's Barbershop is an oil on canvas piece based on a photograph of a barbershop in East Arlington, Vermont. It was reproduced as the cover illustration of The Saturday Evening Post on April 29, 1950. The original painting is part of the collection in the Berkshire Museum in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, a gift to the museum from Rockwell himself.

"Norman Rockwell's Shuffleton's Barbershop" is a production of Foxfield Entertainment, Nightwatch Productions, and Jessamine Productions, plc. Bruce Johnson, John Wilder, and Fernando Szew are executive producers and Mitchell Galin is producer. Mark Jean directs from a script by John Wilder.

Hallmark Movie Channel, the second linear channel from Crown Media Holdings, Inc., simulcast in SD (Standard Definition) and HD (High Definition), is a trusted family-friendly network devoted to quality storytelling. Available in 50 million homes and one of the fastest-growing cable TV networks, Hallmark Movie Channel is a 24-hour digital cable network dedicated to bringing viewers original movies with a mix of classic theatrical films, and presentations from the acclaimed Hallmark Hall of Fame library. In today's crowded television landscape, the network offers viewers a diverse range of film genres, including mysteries, westerns, coming-of-age dramas, and epic fantasies.