The Princess Bride Musical - To Premiere in Chicago

Is David Yazbek still doing the score for this? Between Dead Outlaw, The Roommate, Buena Vista Social Club, The Bedwetter, and now The Princess Bride, he has been working this last year like someone's coming to take his piano.

Wow. Can't imagine who they got if they FIRED Adam Guettel and David Yazbek.

Yazbek seems pretty perfect for the material, on paper at least.

Updated On: 2/24/25 at 11:03 AM

Nah.

ErmengardeStopSniveling said: "To be clear — is this an unsubstantiated rumor you’ve posted? Because I see nopress release, and it would be unwise to put any weight on a rumor that doesn’t even include the creative team.

It’s a great property for a musical. But maybe this property is just cursed."

From what I know, and I trust my ear, this is absolutely unsubstantiated.

Goldman demanded 75% of the author's share.

Losing Yazbek is a major blow. Very few people understand making a good quirky movie into an even better musical as well as he does.

The hit list of dismissed or disgruntled ex-writers on this one is growing! David Yazbek, Adam Guettel, Andy Karl...

Yazbek's musical style never felt right (in my head at least) for this material, which feels like it wants to be something lyrically shrewed but melodically sweeping, and more traditionally romantic.  Adam Guettel felt like such an ideal choice once upon a time ago.

I just hope they don't enlist someone from the pop music world with little understanding of musical theatre to write this.

QueenAlice said: "I just hope they don't enlist someone from the pop music world with little understanding of musical theatre to write this."

It’ll be this.

I'm confused by the talk about Goldman.  William Goldman wrote the original book, but he's been dead since 2018.

SingingEachtoEach said: "I'm confused by the talk about Goldman. William Goldman wrote the original book, but he's been dead since 2018."

Yep.

This musical has been in development for twenty years with at least two entirely different writing teams.

https://playbill.com/article/goldman-and-guettel-part-ways-on-princess-bride-musical-com-138615

The last producer attached to it was Disney.

Updated On: 2/24/25 at 07:24 PM

Anastasia_Beaverhausen said: "Score is Bobby and Kristen-Anderson Lopez."

Look, if that's true, I'm at least a little interested......

Who wrote the book and who's directing?

Buttercup is going to be a hard character to write for, because her character arc in the movie was greatly removed by giving her less dialogue and less scene work (not that Robin Wright wasn't brilliant with what she was given). Buttercup, on paper, is vacuous and stupid, slightly befuddled by the chaos her beauty has thrown her and the kingdom into. It's intended to be satirical, a mockery of the "Disney damsel in distress" archetype, but... will that kind of satire play onstage without seeming cruel? Will they make her more active and intelligent? Or will they follow the film's lead and make her something more of a cipher, at the risk of making her the McGuffin of her own story?