From small screen to big stage
Spielberg is bringing beloved TV series ‘Smash’ to the Great White Way
Steven Spielberg is bringing “Smash” to Broadway.
A stage musical adaptation of the cult-favorite NBC series about a New York theater community will open on Broadway during the 2024-25 season, producers announced Wednesday.
Spielberg, who conceptualized the series and served as an executive producer, will be a lead producer on the Broadway show. The Oscar-winning director’s only prior Broadway producing credit is “The Farnsworth Invention,” a 2007 stage play written by Aaron Sorkin.
“‘Smash’ is near and dear to my heart, and it was always my hope that a musical inspired by the show would eventually come to the stage,” Spielberg said in a statement. “We now have an incredible creative team, and I’m looking forward to completing the ‘Smash’ journey which began with my producing partners over 10 years ago.”
The series aired for two seasons from 2012 to 2013 and largely centered on a group of artists creating “Bombshell,” a musical about Marilyn Monroe. The show’s ensemble cast included Debra Messing, Katharine McPhee, Anjelica Huston and a pre-“Hamilton” Leslie Odom Jr.
The stage musical will again depict the different stages of making and executing “Bombshell” but will introduce story lines differing from the series as well, producers said.
Robert Greenblatt, the former NBC Entertainment chairman who developed “Smash,” and Neil Meron, who produced the series, join Spielberg as lead producers on the stage musical, which fivetime Tony winner Susan Stroman is directing. The cast has not been announced.
“Ever since the show ended in 2012, not a week goes by that someone doesn’t ask us when will they see ‘Smash’ as a musical,” Meron said. “We think we’ve come up with something the die-hard series fans will love but that will also be exciting for people who never saw an episode of the show. And above all else it will be a valentine to the Broadway musical and the exhilarating roller-coaster ride of bringing one to life.”
The announcement comes a little over a year after Spielberg, 76, premiered his first big-screen musical: a 2021 adaptation of “West Side Story.”
His latest film, the semiautobiographical “The Fabelmans,” premiered last November. Both films received seven Oscar nominations, including for best picture.