Hollywood hits bound for B’way
Could “Platoon: The Musical” be coming soon to a Broadway theater near you?
While that’s a long shot, the recent announcement that the Robin Williams movie “Mrs. Doubtfire” is being turned into a Broadway-bound show demonstrates how reworked retro films are all the rage on the Great White Way.
It hasn’t been determined when that adaptation of the hit 1993 comedy might take the stage. When it does, it could join a theatrical reworking of the 1990 film “Pretty Woman,” which is making a killing at the Nederlander Theatre. Since opening last month, that show has twice broken the 97-year-old theater’s record for sales in a single week.
For 26-year-old “Our Lips Are Sealed” actress Taylor Iman Jones, what Generation X may see as a revival, millennials like herself see as new.
“I would almost guarantee that half the people my age seeing ‘Pretty Woman’ [on stage] haven’t seen the movie,” she said.
Jones knew a bit about the ’80s band the Go-Go’s, whose songs drive the story line of “Our Lips are Sealed,” which is playing at the Hudson Theatre. But that wasn’t the case when she landed a role on the Broadway adaptation of the 1993 film “Groundhog Day” in 2016, just three months after moving to New York from the San Francisco Bay area.
“I was one of those people who’d never seen the movie before I auditioned,” Jones admitted. She was 1 when the film came out.
“Groundhog Day” was a hit in the U.K. and got good reviews stateside, too, but only survived five months on Broadway before ending its run in September 2017. It was nominated for seven Tony Awards.
Jones’ “Our Lips Are Sealed” co-star Jeremy Kushnier, 42, thinks part of why Gen X-era movies work well on Broadway is because music was woven into the fabric of the narratives.
“There’s a certain amount of good storytelling that happened in that generation,” said Kushnier. “And when you think of those movies, you think about the soundtracks that came with them and how important those soundtracks were to the movies.”
The “Pretty Woman” soundtrack cracked the Billboard charts and produced the No. 1 hit “It Must Have Been Love” by Roxette. if Gen X’s “short attention span” might lead theatergoers to choose familiarity over invention.
“Unfortunately, sometimes it’s easier to sell a story to ticket buyers who know what they’re seeing,” he said. There’s plenty more retro on the way. A musical modification of the 1982 Dustin Hoffman film “Tootsie” is slated to enter the retro mix when it premieres at the Marquis Theatre on W. 46th St. in April. Also on its way to the Great White Way is a live version of the 1988 Tim Burton film “Beetlejuice,” which begins a “pre-Broadway” run in Washington in October. It’s also worth noting a musical adaptation of the 1993 Ivan Reitman political comedy “Dave” has received fantastic reviews since opening in the nation’s capitol last month and seems destined for bigger things.
One of the biggest openings with ties to a film from a century past is “King Kong,” which swings into the Broadway Theatre to begin previews Oct. 5, featuring an animatronic “leading man” who stands 20 feet tall and weighs 2,000 pounds.
Jeff Bridges and Jessica Lange starred in a popular 1976 adaptation of the 1933 movie, and Linda Hamilton did a 1986 sequel called “King Kong Lives.” Peter Jackson’s 2005 “King Kong” introduced the story to millennials.
Broadway adaptations of popular Gen X films have met with mixed results.
The 1985 drama “The Color Purple” earned 11 Tony nominations during its 2005 to 2008 run. The show was revived in 2015 and closed again in 2017, but not before winning the 2016 Tony for Best Revival of a Musical.
“A Bronx Tale,” another 1993 adaptation, ended its highly publicized Broadway run in August after 700 performances at the Longacre Theatre dating to December 2016.
A live interpretation of the 1992 Whoopi Goldberg comedy “Sister Act” ran for 16 months before closing in August 2012 after receiving five Tony nomination, including Best Musical.
The landmark 1994 LGBTQ film “The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert,” had a solid 526-performance run that produced a cast album before ending in 2012 after being nominated for two Tony Awards and winning one.
The unlikely boxing story “Rocky: The Musical” performed 188 times at the Winter Garden Theatre in 2014. That’s the same venue where “Cats” did a historic 7,397 shows before calling it a night in 2000.