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Sugar Heads Back to Broadway

A new Broadway musical based on Some Like It Hot is in the works, Playbill reports.

“A new musical adaptation of the film classic Some Like It Hot is in the works, with a Broadway premiere slated for 2020. The project hails from the Shubert Organization and Craig Zadan and Neil Meron, the team behind NBC’s roster of live musicals.

The show will feature a score by Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman, plus a book by playwright Matthew Lopez. Casey Nicholaw will direct and choreograph.

Shaiman and Wittman are no strangers to the Marilyn Monroe canon, having previously penned songs for Bombshell, the fictional Monroe bio-musical in the NBC series Smash. A real-life stage presentation of Bombshell, produced by Zadan and Meron, is long-gestating

The 1959 Billy Wilder comedy was previously adapted for the stage with Jule Styne, Bob Merrill, and Peter Stone’s Sugar, which opened on Broadway in 1972, going on to earn four Tony nominations and play over 500 performances.”

 

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‘Bombshell’ Headed for Broadway

After a hugely popular, one-off benefit performance in 2015, plans to bring Bombshell – the fictitious Marilyn musical from NBC’s Smash – to Broadway for real are now taking shape, as Greg Braxton reports for the L.A. Times.

“Craig Zadan and Neil Meron, the award-winning producing team behind the Oscar-winning Chicago and NBC’s live versions of The Sound of Music and The Wiz, are joining forces with NBC Entertainment Chairman Robert Green late for the project, with an opening date yet to be determined. Greenblatt has extensive Broadway experience, producing the musicals Something Rotten! and A Gentleman’s Guide to Love & Murder.

Created by Theresa Rebeck, who also served as showrunner, Smash premiered in 2012 to critical praise. The Times’ Mary McNamara called it a ‘triumph.’ But after a strong start, the series ran into rough creative waters, including exaggerated side plots and strange song breaks. Ratings fell. When Smash returned for its second season, Rebeck and a number of characters were gone. But Smash still was canceled.

The appetite for the show has never died, Zadan said, and has found new life on Netflix. ‘It’s more popular now than when it was on the air.'”