Broadway must ditch musical film adaptations for original stories

Same goes for movie musical adaptations. For the love of God stop with those

We just have this conversation daily and there isn’t much more to say about it.

My thought is that this is a truly terrible piece of op-ed writing.

Many of the great musicals, including much of sondheim’s work - are adaptations. This kind of original is king argument has been discussed to death here over the years and I think we always seek to reach the conclusion that what matters is the quality of the show and there is such a wide variation of quality across adaptations and originals that it usually doesn’t make sense to argue that one is better than the other.


As a general rule, there is no one or place I respect more in terms of theatre criticism than the collective opinions and discussions on this forum. We tackle every topic to death that it’s almost cringeworthy to see people trying to tackle or discuss these topics lol.

Isn't the "Daily Bruin" a college paper for UCLA? Consider the amateur source.

Alex Kulak2 said: "You know what I'd like to see? Musical adaptations of bad movies.

How many times have you gotten out of a movie and thought "the set-up is interesting, but I wish they'd done a better job at it". Do a better job of it... on a stage with songs.Bridges of Madison Countyis a dumb schmaltzy romance movie, and its musical has one of the greatest scores of the 21st century.Newsieswon the Razzie for Worst Song, and it's stage adaptation won the Tony Award for Best Score."

The Bridges of Madison County (film) is 90% positive on Rotten Tomatoes, and Meryl got an Oscar nomination. Try again.

Lest we forget: Little Shop is adapted from an extremely low-budget B movie that was shot in a few days.

Also an ongoing conversation but we really need people to define what they mean by "original" musical. Hamilton is technically based on a book. How to Dance in Ohio is technically based on a movie. So on and so on. Also for the sake of argument, both Outsiders and Water for Elephants started out as books, so if they advertised as being based on the novel, would that be better?

People have been adapting other source material for musicals since the R&H days (and probably before that too). And the recent slate of movie adaptations have actually turned out IMO to be better than a lot of their cash grab equivalents.

Also, comparing & Juliet to an actual production of Romeo and Juliet and saying they're too similar seems laughable

Kind of crazy to have that thesis statement and then point to Wicked, Hamilton, and The Lion King as proof of hunger for musical theatre. Wicked (owing it's roots to arguably the most popular movie ever made) and Lion King... a literal adaptation of a Disney film.

The argument of screen to stage adaptations on its face is a joke. So many musicals (and plays) owe their origin to film or books or other source material. What you should be arguing is the intent behind an individual adaptations existence. Is it a story that begs to be sung or one that can be staged in a way that makes a musical a worthy medium? Great. Musicals don't find success or fail based on what their source material is and that source material can never guarantee something is going to be a success. Do film adaptations get a headstart when it comes to getting to Broadway? Sure, but they can fizzle out just as quick.

That’s so great (I love the show)…but why the actual heck did you post this

How this conversation usually plays out as it has time and time again for the last 15 years

* Someone, somewhere has a 'bright idea' noticing that a common way people produce musicals is to adapt existing material

* Most Broadway shows flop, so most of these shows flop. Someone, somewhere then has a 'bright idea' that either they keep flopping because we need new original work, or contradictory they are succeeding and taking up valuable theatre/'rotting the brains' of apparently mindless audiences who need 'original' work to save them and our art form

* The person with the bright idea then decides to post a thread here, or create a blog or post on reddit that we need to stop doing adaptations and do original work to save the art form

* Then there is a whole discussion about how most musicals are always adapted from something, including the most important and artistically successful musicals ever. To the point where original work seems to be the exception rather than the norm. People also point to a number of original shows. And it seems that maybe like always we actually get a balance and there is no actual problem. It's more just about the quality of the show itself and whether it is good or not, regardless of the source material.

* Conversation dies down and then repeats from the first bullet above to the end every few years.