Broadway must ditch musical film adaptations for original stories

[macbeth]

Posted: 5/14/24 at 5:14pm

A friend just sent me this:

https://dailybruin.com/2024/05/14/second-take-broadway-must-ditch-musical-film-adaptations-for-original-stories

Originality and creativity will always hold the greatest degree of artistic credibility and respect, so Broadway needs to rearrange its priorities if it hopes to remain culturally relevant.

Thoughts?

[hearthemsing22]

Posted: 5/14/24 at 5:17pm

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

[Bobster159]

Posted: 5/14/24 at 5:20pm

So strange to me that an article with this attitude is happy to crap on the adaptations without uplifting any of the original musicals we do have. I get the attitude and would love more original musicals, but we have had Lempicka, Here Lies Love, Gutenberg, Harmony, and Suffs this season. All but Suffs will be gone soon, and it's hardly a sure thing. So, if you're going to write a screed complaining about the adaptations, maybe mention and uplift the ones we have! Then we might get more...

Updated On: 5/14/24 at 05:20 PM

[BroadwayNYC2]

Posted: 5/14/24 at 5:30pm

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

[KevinKlawitter]

Posted: 5/14/24 at 5:51pm

Next thing you'll know someone will write about how Hollywood does too many sequels and remakes.

[Kad]

Posted: 5/14/24 at 6:07pm

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

[BentleyB]

Posted: 5/14/24 at 6:30pm

I love they use Chicago as a musical that went to the screen, when in fact Chicago is based upon a play, that was then made into a movie “Roxie Hart” that was the basis for the musical.  Ridiculous article.

[binau]

Posted: 5/14/24 at 6:35pm

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. 

[Matt Rogers]

Posted: 5/14/24 at 6:39pm

Almost every single musical is based on some sort of underlying source material. That article is ridiculous. 

[dramamama611]

Posted: 5/14/24 at 6:43pm

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

[Alex Kulak2]

Posted: 5/14/24 at 7:35pm

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 County is a dumb schmaltzy romance movie, and its musical has one of the greatest scores of the 21st century. Newsies won the Razzie for Worst Song, and it's stage adaptation won the Tony Award for Best Score.

[Matt Rogers]

Posted: 5/14/24 at 7:46pm

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. 

[KevinKlawitter]

Posted: 5/14/24 at 8:11pm

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."

A good example of this is The Spitfire Grill. The movie isn't bad for the most part, but its ending is so off-the-wall melodramatic and bonkers that it's impossible to take the resolution seriously. The musical ditches the ending and adds some really nice fokly songs ("Come Alive Again" is a favorite of mine)

[Kad]

Posted: 5/14/24 at 8:26pm

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

[KevinKlawitter]

Posted: 5/14/24 at 8:32pm

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

It's actually a really good movie, though.  Cheap as hell to be sure, but it's also really funny and weird. It plays like a comedic episode of The Outer Limits.

RIP Roger Corman

[chrishuyen]

Posted: 5/15/24 at 12:10am

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

[Charley Kringas Inc]

Posted: 5/15/24 at 12:22am

caveman one: so anyway, that my story

caveman two: that good story, thog. make me want do this. [bangs rocks musically]

caveman one: you adapt thog. owe royalty to thog.

[TheatreFan4]

Posted: 5/15/24 at 12:56am

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. 

[Melissa25]

Posted: 11/22/25 at 6:42pm

I binged all 3 seasons (18 episodes) of the dark comedy Getting On this week. The HBO series is about the lives of the workers and patients at an extended care unit.  Laurie Metcalf plays the director of medicine. Her Dr. Jenna James is quite unlike any other character that I have seen her play. Metcalf is brilliant. Niecy Nash and Alex Borstein turn in extraordinary performances as lead nurses.  I am not sure how I missed this show when it first came out but it was so worth watching. I have been thinking about so many of the characters over the past few days.  I wish someone like Tesori or La Chiusa would turn this into a musical. There would be so many great opportunities for so many of these characters to break out in song.  Check out this dark comedy with a heartfelt center.  The stage actors that guested included: June Squibb, Betty Buckley, Jean Smart, Rhea Perlman, Frances Conroy, Kristen Johnson and Rita Moreno.

[BroadwayNYC2]

Posted: 11/22/25 at 10:28pm

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

[Melissa25]

Posted: 11/22/25 at 10:53pm

BroadwayNYC2: That’s so great (I love the show)…but why the actual heck did you post this.

I guess you can call it screaming into the current musical void.

[binau]

Posted: 11/23/25 at 6:22am

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. 

[sinister teashop]

Posted: 11/23/25 at 9:50am

Kad said: "My thought is that this is a truly terrible piece of op-ed writing."

It made me read the title three times and I’m still confused over whether they mean adaptations of “musical films” or just “films” into musicals as opposed to original stories.