Duo thrilled to turn Come From Away into film
Couple’s smash-hit musical tells story of strangers united in the wake of Sept. 11 tragedy
They’ve only just begun working on the script’s first draft, but the creators of Come From Away say they’re bursting with ideas for the cinematic version of their Broadway musical.
“All of these things we’ve imagined,” says David Hein, “we can actually blow open and show in this rich world.”
Huge sets, actual East Coast locations and a sizable cast that could fill an opera house: none of those options were on the table when Hein and Irene Sankoff began writing their play about six years ago. Now the sky’s the limit. Come From Away was dreamt up after the married couple visited Gander, N.L., on the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. They built the storyline around a minimal set that consisted of little more than 12 chairs and 12 actors arranged in creative ways.
The duo already had some experience in screenwriting and they say the play’s script had a certain degree of cinematic flair from the start.
Coming up with ways to translate their vision onto the big screen is thrilling, they say, with possibilities including the portrayal of nearly 7,000 stranded passengers roaming the streets of a small town.
“We’re finding it really fun to let the script for the stage fill out,” Sankoff says. “(To) be able to show more of the world, show more of the characters and the place itself. It’s totally exciting.”
Sankoff expects Come From Away will film in Canada, especially since Newfoundland and Labrador is practically its own character in the script.
“Places like the Dover Fault, Appleton Peace Park, yeah, we’ve gotta be there,” she says.
Hein and Sankoff have been on a tear since Come From Away opened in Toronto and subsequently went to Broadway in February.
It picked up a Tony Award for Best Direction of a Musical and has collected a number of other accolades throughout the year, including five Outer Critics Circle Awards, three Drama Desk Awards, four Helen Hayes Awards, three Toronto Thea- Come From Away, tre Critics Awards and three Dora Awards, among others. A Grammy Award nomination for Best Musical Theatre Album was the latest recognition on Tuesday.
Neither one has given much serious thought to who could star in the film, they say.
“We’ve barely even started talking about that,” Hein says. “We’re right on that edge.”
The musical received another kudo this week when it was announced it had broken the all-time box office record at Broadway’s Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre, where it’s been playing since February.
Its gross for the week ending Nov. 26 was $1,527,279.50 (U.S.), which beat the record set in 2014 for It’s Only a Play. Come From Away recouped its $12-million investment in less than eight months.
It will return to Toronto with an almost all-Canadian cast at Mirvish Productions’ Royal Alexandra Theatre on Feb. 13, 2018.
And it will kick off a North American tour in Seattle in October 2018. With files from Debra Yeo