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#1

Help - Movies to Broadway list

Hey Guys,
I am just working on a project about shows that were based on movies (movies came first). I am trying to come up with a list of them...can you guys give me some ideas or just shout it out!?
When someone blunders, we say that he makes a misstep. Is it then not clear that all the ills of mankind, all the tragic misfortunes that fill our history books, all the political blunders, all the failures of the great leaders have arisen merely from a lack of skill in dancing. - Moliere
#3

re: Help - Movies to Broadway list

Awesome! Thanks!

If anyone has any others, the more I can get the more legitimate my arguement will be!
When someone blunders, we say that he makes a misstep. Is it then not clear that all the ills of mankind, all the tragic misfortunes that fill our history books, all the political blunders, all the failures of the great leaders have arisen merely from a lack of skill in dancing. - Moliere
#4

re: Help - Movies to Broadway list

What about all the Disney movies?

Marry Poppins, The Lion King, Tarzan, etc..
Give me claws and a hunch, just away from this bunch.
#5

re: Help - Movies to Broadway list

Lots of Disney shows were movies first:

The Lion King
Beauty and the Beast
The Little Mermaid
Mary Poppins

Others:

The Producers
The Color Purple
Spamalot (based on Monty Python and the Holy Grail)
She Loves Me (based on The Shop Around the Corner)

Updated On: 11/20/08 at 06:14 PM

#6

re: Help - Movies to Broadway list

Billy Elliot
"i had no idea billy elliot was about one boy's triumph over epilepsy."-FindingNamo
#7

re: Help - Movies to Broadway list

Nine, Promises Promises, Carnival, 42nd Street, Sunset Boulevard, A LIttle Night Music, Passion, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, Spamalot, Billy Elliot, Thoroughly Modern Millie, Big, Beauty and the Beast, The Little Mermaid, The Lion King, Tarzan, Sugar, Smile, The Full Monty, The Producers, Applause, Woman of the Year, The Red Shoes, Cry-Baby, High Fidelity, Nine to Five, The Wedding Singer. And SOOOO many more.
"Sing the words, Patti!!!!" Stephen Sondheim to Patti LuPone.
#8

re: Help - Movies to Broadway list

Georgy
Evil Dead
Cry Baby
Applause
Lestat
Shrek
Thoroughly Modern Millie
Meet Me In St. Louis
Footloose
Saturday Night Fever
The Little Mermaid
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
Xanadu
The Lion King
Grey Gardens
Beauty and the Beast
The Full Monty
Big
Light in the Piazza
Sugar
A Little Night Music
King of Hearts
So Long 174th Street
My Favorite Year
The Producers
The Wedding Singer
Ballroom
High Fidelity
42nd Street
Dirty Rotten Scoundrels
Billy Elliot
Sweet Smell of Success
Legally Blonde
Nine
State Fair
Seven Brides for Seven Brothers
A Catered Affair
The Grinch
White Christmas
Singin' In The Rain
Tarzan
Carrie
Young Frankenstein
The Goodbye Girl
High Society
Hairspray
The Red Shoes
Urban Cowboy
9 to 5
Sunset Boulevard
Victor/ Victoria
Mary Poppins
...
The Color Purple
[title of show] on Broadway. it's time. believe.
#9

re: Help - Movies to Broadway list

Thank you so much guys! I really appreciate it!
When someone blunders, we say that he makes a misstep. Is it then not clear that all the ills of mankind, all the tragic misfortunes that fill our history books, all the political blunders, all the failures of the great leaders have arisen merely from a lack of skill in dancing. - Moliere
#10

re: Help - Movies to Broadway list

I think Lestat was actually based on a book more than anything.

Also, was Little Shop of Horrors mentioned?
#11

re: Help - Movies to Broadway list

Fame (Off Broadway but hey)
And a UK one is Flashdance which started recently and will make its way to the US next year
Dirty Dancing
Legs Diamond (ish)
Namo i love u but we get it already....you don't like Madonna
#12

re: Help - Movies to Broadway list

Just about every musical on Broadway in the past 10 years.
The only review of a show that matters is your own.
#14

re: Help - Movies to Broadway list

Hmmmm...several of those mentioned were novels or plays before they were films. Do you plan on counting those?

Just about every musical on Broadway in the past 10 years.

Nope. Of the 89 new musicals that opened on Broadway since 1998 through those slated to open through the end of this season, 28 of them were based solely on films (i.e. originally written directly for the screen or using scores from the film version of an adapted screenplay). In other words, less than a third. There are those that lie in the gray area, such as The Color Purple, which was originally a wonderful novel by Alice Walker, but its book (and direction) borrowed heavily from the Spielberg film.

Those that were novels or plays before they were popularized on film:

Applause
Lestat
So Long, 174th Street
High Fidelity
How the Grinch Stole Christmas
Carrie
The Color Purple
"What can you expect from a bunch of seitan worshippers?" - Reginald Tresilian
#16

re: Help - Movies to Broadway list

wasn't Legally Blonde to?
Namo i love u but we get it already....you don't like Madonna
#17

re: Help - Movies to Broadway list

yup, Legally Blonde is a book by Amanda Brown.. although most people don't know about it lol
I didn't know about it until I saw it in the credits of the movie.. and when I went to go find it in stores, it is now out of print...
But yeah, MOST of this list should be eliminated, although, Legally Blonde was directly based on the Movie, since the book was different
#18

re: Help - Movies to Broadway list

You may want to separate the lists.

Some stage musicals have been based on movie musicals using the film score and often supplemented with additional songs. Right now you've got the Disney trio for example. 42nd Street is about the best of these.

Other films that are called musicals are actually films with music. The film score is not sung by the characters, but is used in the movie as commentary and on stage become book songs. Saturday Night Fever for example, although the show was dreadful.

Some have been based on non-musical films that were originals such as The Apartment (adapted into Promises, Promises), Billy Elliot and Hairspray. If there were songs in the films, all or nearly all were discarded.

Other film-to-stage shows were books or plays before they became non-musical films. Legally Blonde falls into this category. So do many shows.

So Long, 174th Street has a long ancestry: book by Carl Reiner, hit stage play by Joe Stein, flop film adaptation of the play (all 3 called Enter Laughing), then came the fast flop 174th Street musical, only to be revived this season with the title Enter Laughing the Musical and its a hit.

"If my life weren't funny, it would just be true. And that would be unacceptable." --Carrie Fisher
#19

re: Help - Movies to Broadway list

everyone always forgets that Ragtime was a movie before a musical. I think the musical is more based on the book, but whatever

Oh and Sweet Charity is based on a Federico Fellini film.
...everyone was doing the mambo and drinking golden cadillacs...
#20

re: Help - Movies to Broadway list

Sweet Charity, Fosse's flop Big Deal... What about ones base don books or plays that were also movies? Ragtime, New Girl In Town, Grand Hotel, Phantom, etc?

Passion was originally a novel (called Fosca I think) but Sondheim has said he based it on the Italian movie adaptation Passione D'Amour--he hadn't read the novel (it was translated and published in English on after Passion opened).

Chicago is based on a play I suppose but the impetus to do the musical was based on the Ginger Rogers movie version.

There definetly seems to be a difference between shows that try to market off the notoriety of the movie (the Disney ones, Legally Blonde, Sat Night Fever etc) and the ones that there isn't much of a movie/musical connection made (Sweet Charity, Passion, Night Music etc)
#21

re: Help - Movies to Broadway list

Chicago is "based" on Roxie Hart, the film with Ginger Rogers, but I think it was a play before that.
#22

re: Help - Movies to Broadway list

She Loves Me (and The Shop Around the Corner, and In the Good Old Summertime and later You've Got Mail...) was actually based on the play Parfumerie, by Miklos Laszlo.
When I see the phrase "the ____ estate", I imagine a vast mansion in the country full of monocled men and high-collared women receiving letters about productions across the country and doing spit-takes at whatever they contain. -Kad
#23

re: Help - Movies to Broadway list

Grand Hotel was based on the 1932 Oscar-winner of the same name.
#24

re: Help - Movies to Broadway list

Tommy Tune hated the movie of Grand Hotel and said he based it solely on Baum's novel. Though the original 60s (?) writing was probably based on the movie.

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