"THE MUSIC TEACHER," A HALLMARK CHANNEL ORIGINAL MOVIE STARRING EMMY AND GOLDEN GLOBE NOMINEE ANNIE POTTS, GOES INTO PRODUCTION IN CANADA FOR WORLD PREMIERE, AUGUST 12

Hallmark Channel announces that Annie Potts has been cast as the lead in the musical drama, "The Music Teacher," a two-hour Hallmark Channel Original Movie that begins production in Canada in early April and will have its World Premiere on Hallmark Channel, Sunday, August 12 (8 p.m. ET/PT, 7C). "The Music Teacher" will feature original songs and lyrics that are being composed specifically for the film by Alan Ett.

In "The Music Teacher," Potts plays Alyson Daley, a high school music teacher who loses her beloved music program to district budget cuts. Daley created the program to help her eager, ambitious and talented students excel professionally and losing it means the kids will not have musical performance as an avenue to a brighter future. On a personal level, the music program has been Daley's therapy to deal with the excruciating accidental deaths of her husband and son. Alyson Daley is devastated. Just when she thinks the dream is over, Daley's former students reunite to put on a show-stopping musical to raise funds to keep the program - and everyone's dreams - alive.

Annie Potts returns to series television in the highly anticipated new drama GCB, based on the bestselling book Good Christian Bitches. Potts has created many famous female roles in her career, perhaps none better known that "Mary Jo Shively" from "Designing Women." Potts was nominated for an Emmy Award for her work in "Love & War" and she received two Screen Actors Guild nominations for her work on "Any Day Now." Potts is also known for film roles "Pretty in Pink," "King of the Gypsies," "Ghostbusters I & II," and many others. Annie Potts has a long list of Broadway credits, most recently taking over for Tony nominee Hope Davis in "God of Carnage."

Hallmark Channel, owned and operated by Crown Media Holdings, Inc., is a 24-hour basic cable network that provides a diverse slate of high-quality entertainment programming available in high definition (HD) and standard definition (SD) to a national audience of 87 million subscribers. The top tier program service is distributed through approximately 5,492 cable systems and communities as well as direct-to-home satellite services across the country. Hallmark Channel is the nation's leading network in quality family programming with an ambitious slate of original TV movies, lifestyle and general entertainment content, and is the home of "The Martha Stewart Show", which anchors the channel's daytime original programming block. Hallmark Channel's sibling network is Hallmark Movie Channel, also available in HD and SD, which focuses on the family-friendly movies with a mix of classic theatrical films, presentations from the acclaimed Hallmark Hall of Fame library, original Hallmark Channel movies and special events.