PRETTY WOMAN Musical Being Developed- Page 2

[Mister Matt]

Posted: 12/9/14 at 4:44pm

Well, if there's one thing I learned from the original book and score of Brigadoon, if you love someone hard enough and sing loud enough, you can cross even the boundaries of magic spells.

I just need to work on my projection.

Updated On: 12/9/14 at 04:44 PM

[Mr. Nowack]

Posted: 12/9/14 at 4:48pm

I thought the SWEET CHARITY comment was about the similarity of source material. Prostitute with a heart of gold and all that jazz.

Updated On: 12/9/14 at 04:48 PM

[GavestonPS]

Posted: 12/9/14 at 5:55pm

Why do people still perpetuate the myth than a musical with an original book used to be common and automatically makes a show better in some way? Is it because they hate the majority of musical writers and composers?

I think it's because the adaptations today seem so commercially calculated. (I actually think PRETTY WOMAN might make good source material for a musical (it's a modern-day CINDERELLA) if the writers feel free to flesh out the story and refuse to simply reproduce the film with songs inserted.)

SHOW BOAT was a bestseller and perhaps Ziegfeld was thinking commercially as the producer, but that isn't how Kern spoke of the project and Hammerstein used the popular source material to invent a new form of musical theater. Certainly, R&H didn't choose GREEN GROW THE LILACS thinking tourists would flock to the b.o. because they loved the play.

I can't blame producers for wanting to protect at $15 million investment by adapting a beloved title, but doing so is an invitation to slavish (and dull) repetition.

[darquegk]

Posted: 12/9/14 at 6:22pm

The bigger musicals became, the bigger Broadway became, and the bigger the Broadway industry became. That's why you have so many "big, calculated adaptations" these days- it's because Broadway writers and producers aren't indie artists anymore as much as they are a Hollywood-like system. You write your NYMF shows and song cycles like you write your spec scripts in Hollywood, and you nurse your passion project for years while hoping to strike gold and get picked up for a major project. Meanwhile, producers are optioning titles and licensing properties left and right nowadays, same as they have been in Hollywood for a century, because they've just now realized that they can.

And there will always be crap adaptations, but there will always be good ones. They don't even have to be terribly distant from the source material- they just have to not detract from it. "The Full Monty" is arguably better than the film it's based on. "Dirty Rotten Scoundrels" is probably about equal to the brilliant screen farce.

I'll even say this: "Shrek" was a near-impossible project to make any good, but Jeanine Tesori and David Lindsey-Abaire did a pretty good job with what could have been deadly in anyone else's hands, because Tesori is the master at crafting characters with vivid and distinct inner lives that sometimes seem at odds with their exterior- look at "Millie" and "Fun Home." No one but her would have seen Shrek- big, green, farting ogre with a silly hybrid accent- and thought to make him a tragicomic figure. But Tesori's songs gave him a heart, a big green broken one. Some of the show's artistic choices were odd or questionable: they never did figure out quite how to do Dragon well; making Lord Farquaad an exceptionally nance-ish homosexual was a reductive decision bordering on minstrel show; finally, the whole show teeter-totters back and forth between being an extended riff on gay liberation, and an extended riff on parental neglect and the scars it leaves (come to think of it, it's almost as if "Shrek" was a low-pressure dry run for the themes of "Fun Home.") But the show sometimes feels uneven, yet not perfunctory.

Personally, my time writing a fully original show was slightly hellish. It was the only complete original I've worked on in my whole career thus far, and ever since, I've either licensed works I knew exactly what I wanted to do with, or worked on public domain materials that allowed me to run in my own direction. (For examples: my lifelong passion project is to eventually do a musical based on "Beetlejuice" incorporating not only the cult classic film but elements of the more tightly-plotted and less absurdist original screenplay; and my current show, almost done, is a musical adaptation based on Shakespeare's more farcical comedies, based primarily on "The Comedy of Errors" but incorporating plot elements from "As You Like It" and "The Taming of the Shrew.")

[RooMcGoo]

Posted: 12/9/14 at 9:19pm

So funny! So unnecessary. I'm already imagining what the future Forrest Gump musical is gonna look like...
A New Musical: "Run, Forrest, Run"

[Phillypinto]

Posted: 7/10/15 at 3:57pm

any updates on this?

[SweetLips]

Posted: 7/10/15 at 4:22pm

"I've Grown Accustomed To HIS Lace?

On the Street Where You Work?

The Stain in Spain?

Blow Me?



"

 

[Sally Durant Plummer]

Posted: 7/10/15 at 6:05pm

I hope they restore the original ending, where he leaves her on the street crying, throwing his $300 at her.

[Sally Durant Plummer]

Posted: 7/10/15 at 6:12pm

        EDWARD
Here, take it. It's your money.

        VIVIAN
    (sobbing in fits)
I don't want it. Just go away.

        EDWARD
Take it.

        VIVIAN
No.


        EDWARD
You'll regret it tomorrow if you don't take it. You'll regret it the
minute I drive away.

Vivian doesn't say anything. Edward lays the envelope down on
the sidewalk in front of her.He turns and walks around the car. Vivian lies frozen for a
moment and then suddenly snaps alive as she hears the sound of his car door opening and closing.She grabs the envelope and crushes it in her hand.

She leaps at the car and starts smashing her fists against it and the
windows.

        VIVIAN
Go to hell! I hate you! I hate your money! I hate it!

We see a flash of Edward's face as he stares at Vivian pounding
on his window. She's completely lost her mind. He puts the car in gear and pushes on the accelerator.

Vivian is still pounding as the car pulls away. In a final gesture of rage she throws the envelope at the car and it breaks open as the car peels off.The money scatters across the gutter as the car drives away.

Vivian falls to her knees, weak and crying.

Across the street various shabby-looking people stare at Vivian and the money.Vivian is on her hands and knees sobbing. She can barely
breathe. She is completely broken.She wipes the tears from her cheeks. She looks down
 the street. The Mercedes is gone.

For a brief moment she is still, frozen like a statue.

She reaches down in the gutter and starts to pick up the money.

 

 

 

 

I mean, perfect for musical comedy, right?

[CindersGolightly]

Posted: 1/8/17 at 9:15pm

So, this is still going on I guess! There have been a couple of recent readings in LA starring Annaleigh Ashford as Vivian Ward and Patrick Wilson as Edward Lewis. Arrangements by Will Van Dyke, book by J. F. Lawton, score by Jim Vallance and Bryan Adams, and directed by Jerry Mitchell. 

[Call_me_jorge]

Posted: 1/8/17 at 11:52pm

Alison Luff.... she needs to be in this.

[A Canadian in NYC]

Posted: 5/26/17 at 9:33pm

Giving this a bump as it looks like its still a go. 

http://www.playbill.com/article/pretty-woman-musical-directed-by-jerry-mitchell-aiming-for-broadway-in-20182019-season

I immediately thought of Annaleigh Ashford for the role of Vivian. Seems like it could be tailor made for her.  I would also love to see Lena Hall in this.   I have no ideas for the casting of Edward. 

I read in this post mostly negative comments on the show - but with Bryan Adams on board - who knows?