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One of the reasons moviemakers 'buy' the film rights is that they can make whatever changes they want.

Even as wonderful a stage show as My Fair Lady had some tweaking done, Oliver had some major changes and the 1963 version of Bye Bye Birdie, while fun, departs drastically from the original work.

Most of the time the authors of the stage work just pocket the money and keep their mouths shut.

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Generally the writers of the musical offer assistance in adapting their works for the screen with the help of several ghost writers and hollywood producers. In other cases, Rent for instance, had permission from the Larson estate to let Chris Columbus provide some new material (the engagement sequence in particular). In the recent movie version of The Producers, Mel Brooks and Thomas Meehan, the writers behind the stage version provided the adaptation. Chicago's recent movie musical recieved permission from Fred Ebb, who was still alive at the time to take some liberties with the original script since he owned the rights to it. Occasionally, the rights to a play or musical are sold off completely (for an example, MTI now owns exclusively the rights to all of Jonathan Larson's material and tends to acquire most of Sondheim and Stephen Schwartz's work).

Basically, when they make a movie musical, they have to get explicit permission to not only make it but for any changes they make the material. Otherwise, they are liable for a lawsuit that will generally be extremely large.

Updated On: 4/26/06 at 03:59 PM