Just what the title says – what popular movies could you envision being turned into good Broadway musicals? I guess it’s a bit of a tricky question, because some movies that wouldn’t strike me as having much musicalizing potential, such as “The Color Purple” or “Sunset Boulevard” were successfully adapted. So it all just depends on who’s doing the adapting. Still, some stories seem inherently more suitable than others (ie, “Hairspray”).
Best one I could think of was Saved!. I pictured a couple of Christian folk style anthems, a number when the guy told his girlfriend he was gay, a soul-searching ballad when the main girl decided to sleep with him to make him straight again, a show-stopper set at the re-orientation camp – so many possibilities! I guess someone else also saw the potential, because according to the show’s wikipedia page it’s already been turned into a musical that will premiere this year!
I think The Princess Bride would make a dandy musical, if done by the right people (the main “right person” being William Goldman). I wonder what became of this project.
Good idea! I hope they finish the project, though it’s hard to imagine Adam Guettel writing the music – seems more like a job for Frank Wildhorn?
Incidentally, I could swear that this subject was done only a year or two ago – I’d swear I remember someone suggesting “Steel Magnolias.” I can’t find the thread though. I haven’t been around the Dope in a while; have large parts of the archives gone missing?
The musical versions of Streetcar Named Desire and Planet of the Apes from The Simpsons should be adapted into a live version.
*New Orleeeans…
Home of pirates, drunks, and whores!
New Orleeeans…
Tacky, overpriced, souvenir stores!
If you want to go to Hell, you should make that trip
to the Sodom and Gomorrah on the Mississipp’!
New Orleeeans…
Stinking, rotten, vomiting, vile!
New Orleaaans…
Putrid, brackish, maggoty, foul!
New Orleeeans…
Crummy, lousy, rancid, and rank!
New Orleeeans!*
Classic!
I was also going to suggest a musical Lord of the Rings but it appears I’m behind the times.
There have been two attempts; one flopped on Broadway and the other was a retooled version that plays regionally. It’s most successful run was with Estelle Parsons, though the most intriguing was probably the one at Will Geer’s Theatricum Botanicum that starred Ellen Geer (Grandpa Walton’s daughter) as Maude; when she was young she played Sunshine Dore in the movie.
Reviews are mixed though. I think it could probably be really re-worked into something good. Carol Burnett has said she’d love to play Maude if it’s ever fixed. Gone With the Wind opened this week as a musical in London this month. (Official Homepage.) Rumors are that Hugh Jackman is being courted to play Rhett Butler on Broadway. This isn’t the first time it’s been musicalized (the first time was in the 70s and starred Harve Presnell, bk4 Unsinkable Molly Brown in the 60s and the father-in-law in Fargo many years later), but the first version had lackluster reviews and tanked due to high costs. The current version is a completely different book and lyrics and the pre-talk seems pretty good.
Post edit window addendum to above: this review gives a detailed account of the musical GWTW. His review is mixed. Overall he says it’s great acting and decent score but at times cliched and always rushed. The musical seems to follow the book more closely than the movie (there are characters who weren’t in the movie [though not Grandma Fontain, dang it!] and Scarlett has her other children).
A musical, huh? You’ll always have the hurdle of having your characters need to realistically burst into song from time to time… for some movies, that would be a dealbreaker right there.
Hmmm. With that caveat, I’d suggest:
The Sixth Sense - The pscychologist would be a bass, or maybe a tenor, I think, and you’d need a great preteen male soprano in the Haley Joel Osment role. Hey, it could work!
Misery - I know, I know, Carrie flopped, but of all of the Stephen King novels and subsequent movies, I think this could be a very cool, dark, musical. For that matter, 'Salem’s Lot could, too. Oh, yeah.
Trading Places - This could be magnificent with the right people in the Dan Ackroyd and Eddie Murphy roles. I foresee some good duets with the two elderly brothers singing, too. (I saw Dirty Rotten Scoundrels as a stage musical when it came through town last year, and it was really good - there are some real similarities in tone and subject matter between these two).
*
The American President* - A love story with politics? It’ll practically write itself!
Classic!