Pushing Daisies on stage!

[Piper2]

Posted: 2/15/14 at 6:33am

I read in Entertainment Weekly that Bryan Fuller has had "conversations very recently with Barry Sonnenfield about financing a film, and with [series star] Kristen Chenoweth and Warner Brothers about developing a stage musical."

I think PD would be fun as a musical.


Updated On: 2/15/14 at 06:33 AM

[Wynbish]

Posted: 2/15/14 at 7:18am

He's been talking about the graphic novel since the day after it last aired. If this gets done first, I'll be pissed. I don't need to know what happened but this time, with music. I need to know what happens next, damn it!

[disneybroadwayfan22]

Posted: 2/15/14 at 7:49am

Do ALL TV shows have to be musicals now?

[Liza's Headband]

Posted: 2/15/14 at 7:49am

Do ALL Disney movies have to be stage musicals now?

[ljay889]

Posted: 2/15/14 at 7:56am

^ LOL HEADBAND!!!

[disneybroadwayfan22]

Posted: 2/15/14 at 7:57am

That's true too, but you just always have to be snarky, don't you?

[dramamama611]

Posted: 2/15/14 at 10:19am

Why do you get to be snarky but not Headband? Ridiculous.

(But you are both right.)

I never feel TVshows work as a finite product (stage show, movie). A series is meant to be ongoing, with no definite story....just ideas, premises, etc. A musical (or whatever) needs to have a distinct arc with an ending.

[HenryTDobson]

Posted: 2/15/14 at 11:40am

I typically agree with you dramamaama, but I found that this specific project would have worked better as a film and/or musical to start with. I was a huge Pushing Daisies fan, but the whole premise got very old very fast. I'm not surprised that it only lasted a season and a half since there's only so much you can do with such an idea.

Nevertheless, it was a beautifully created show; I would hope that the musical would be as well.

Updated On: 2/15/14 at 11:40 AM

[kade.ivy]

Posted: 2/15/14 at 12:36pm

Does EVERY cultural product have to be a musical now? Is it illegal for a truly original musical to open on Broadway?

[Liza's Headband]

Posted: 2/15/14 at 12:47pm

To be fair, practically every musical -- even those from the "golden age" -- is based on some kind of source material. Can you name at least ten completely original musicals from the last 50 years or so?

[WhizzerMarvin]

Posted: 2/15/14 at 1:12pm

LH- Many musicals are based on some source material, but just to play along with your challenge, here's 10 from the last five or six years:

Passing Strange
The Story of My Life
Glory Days
[title of show]
13
Next to Normal
Curtains
The Book of Mormon
The People In the Picture
First Date

[Liza's Headband]

Posted: 2/15/14 at 1:34pm

Whiz, most of those are original but inspired by source material (ex. STORY OF MY LIFE and "It's A Wonderful Life" believe it or not). My point to the poster complaining above my post was that everything is based some kind of 'cultural product.' Whatever that means. Even PASSING STRANGE is loosely inspired by Othello. At least that's what I have heard from interviews with Stew.

Also, just to continue with the game, CURTAINS is based on the book by Peter Stone. It was never complete but it was still the basis of this musical. Of course this conversation could lead us to the argument of source material and its influence, along with the ideas of "inspired by" and "based on." But that might be for a different day...

[WhizzerMarvin]

Posted: 2/15/14 at 1:45pm

The Story of My Life has a character obsessed with It's a Wonderful Life, and they share a few similar themes, but the musical is not an adaptation of any source material, which is what I consider the main criterion of an "original" musical to be.

The title of Passing Strange comes from Othello, but the musical itself has nothing to do with it, ha. (Do you think it does?)

Even Chaplin, Scandalous and The Scottsboro Boys I would consider original musicals, despite their bio-nature, unless they were specifically adapted from one (auto)biographical source.

If we are talking about the repackaging of a cultural product for the Broadway stage then The Story of My Life and Passing Strange are certainly not that.

For the record, I don't think a musical being "original" makes it any better or purer than a musical adapted from source material.

[brldisteach2]

Posted: 2/15/14 at 2:58pm

If a show is good it's good and if it's bad it's bad--Doesn't really matter if it's an original concept or adapted from something else. I loved Pushing Daisies and it had a musical element to the show already. If they could get Kristin Chenoweth and Ellen Green in the musical, that would be amazing.

[promisespromises2]

Posted: 2/15/14 at 3:03pm

LOVE this idea! Even thought of it while watching the show!

[mjohnson2]

Posted: 2/15/14 at 3:24pm

I have the same opinion of this as I do with any other musical:
If it's good, people won't care where it came from.

[Jon]

Posted: 2/15/14 at 4:45pm

My problem is that Chenoweth's character on the TV show was a supporting role. I fear it she stars in the musical, will turn into "The Olive Show".

[Plum]

Posted: 2/15/14 at 5:16pm

I liked Ned and Chuck, but honestly the TV show was pretty much the Olive and Emerson show to me anyway.

And this isn't exactly an instance of a musical hanging off the popularity of its pre-existing source - about 11 people watched Pushing Daisies.

[Mr. Nowack]

Posted: 2/15/14 at 6:23pm

I would love this to happen. I think it could work really well as a small-scale, maybe Off-Broadway type of show, although I don't know if the creative team would want to go that way. I also think that the crime-solving aspect might have to be changed since disconnected crimes might not work if the story is compacted into a single entity rather than its original ongoing episodic format.

[finebydesign]

Posted: 2/15/14 at 6:44pm

How many Broadway musicals have been based on TV shows?

[Charley Kringas Inc]

Posted: 2/15/14 at 7:27pm

Aw, fer cute, this would make a fantastic show.

[ray-andallthatjazz86]

Posted: 2/15/14 at 7:32pm

I don't get the issues with adaptations, some of the best shows ever written are adaptations; what matters is that the creative team knows how to adapt it to the stage. I think this sounds like a great idea, I agree that the show did not have enough there to create a TV series.
Is it clear that Chenoweth will star? I wonder if they are talking to her as a producer instead, it'd be odd to see Olive as played by Chenoweth starring alongside random actors in the other roles.

[Gothampc]

Posted: 2/15/14 at 11:22pm

It really isn't meant for the stage. There were several sight gags that need closeups and can't be recreated onstage.

Plus there is absolutely nobody that could be as good as the sisters as Swoosie Kurtz and Ellen Greene were.

They really need to do a separate show about the sisters because they made the show interesting.

[Gothampc]

Posted: 2/15/14 at 11:23pm

Plus, what time period are they going to set it in? Season 1 had a very nondescript "Dick Tracy" time period. Season 2 was definitely modern day.

[darquegk]

Posted: 2/15/14 at 11:28pm

The show was set in what some people call "Batman time," a term which denotes a sliding timeline in which a certain stretch of years are existing concurrently on top of each other.