It prices some huge cash to open an enormous musical on Broadway—anyplace from $18 million to $32 million simply to get within the door.
So, in case you wanna be a producer and you’ve got a golden ticket at your disposal to get you thru that door extra simply, who might blame you? Welcome to an entire new world the place the golden ticket is synergy, branding and mental property on Broadway. “Mental property” just isn’t a brand new phrase—it was supposedly coined within the nineteenth Century throughout an early copyright dispute—and it merely means a artistic work from which revenue might be derived. The large distinction, some 200 years later, is that mental property—TV exhibits, music catalogues, comedian strips, and most of all, films—might be marketed and bought to the American public in ever extra worthwhile methods.
Because the shopworn adage goes, on Broadway you possibly can can’t make a dwelling however you may make a killing; certainly the animated Disney movie, “The Lion King,” earned practically one billion {dollars} in worldwide field workplace launch; nevertheless, the stage model, additionally taking part in world wide (and nonetheless doing very nicely on Broadway), has grossed ten occasions that quantity. Discuss hakuna matata—no worries.
At present, probably the most strong visitors on the stage concerning mental property comes from Broadway’s eternally advanced dance with Hollywood.
There’s nothing new about adapting films because the supply materials for musicals; the primary vital adaptation was “Carnival in Flanders,” a 1953 bomb, which nonetheless yielded the usual “Right here’s That Wet Day.” The pattern actually started in earnest through the mid Nineteen Fifties, with such screenplay-driven musicals as “Fanny and Silk Stockings” (based mostly, respectively, on a trilogy of French movies and the Greta Garbo film, “Ninotchka”). Critics who condemn the newest tsunami of movie-based musicals have brief reminiscences; for instance, from the 1966-67 season to the 1972-73 season, Broadway performed host to quite a few musicals derived from unique screenplays, together with (however not solely): “Candy Charity,” “Illya Darling,” “Henry, Candy Henry,” “Golden Rainbow,” “Guarantees, Guarantees,’ “La Strada,” “Ari,” “Georgy,” “Applause,” “70, Ladies, 70” “Sugar,” “A Little Night time Music.” Do you instantly acknowledge the movies on which they’re based mostly? In all probability not, as a result of up to now, theatrical producers went out of their option to distance their new stage properties from the cinematic supply by creating a brand new id for the musical present or not less than by altering the title. (I’ve supplied the solutions in a postscript.*) When producer David Merrick purchased the rights to Billy Wilder’s movie, “The House,” and reimagined it as “Guarantees, Guarantees” in 1968, it wasn’t as a result of he hoped to money in on the movie’s “big fan base.”
It’s onerous to know precisely when Broadway realized it had extra to realize than to lose by embracing its film antecedents; there have been a number of outliers (“Destry Rides Once more,” “Shenandoah”), however by the Nineteen Eighties, when there was an explosion of unique movie musicals tailored on to the stage (“forty second Road,” “Singin’ within the Rain,” ‘Meet Me in St. Louis,” and so forth.), it appeared futile to carry again the tide—why conceal what you have been paying for?
The key distinction within the twenty first Century is that the movie studios that personal these doubtlessly profitable mental properties eagerly opened up their vaults and now actively produce or co-produce the stage musical model themselves. This pattern was initiated by Disney Theatrical Productions, after all, establishing its personal huge stage manufacturing division, staging and supervising multi-million greenback variations of “Tarzan,” “Mary Poppins” (originating on the West Finish, co-produced by Cameron Waterproof coat), “The Little Mermaid,” “Newsies,” “Aladdin” and “Frozen” (itself a gloss on Broadway’s “Depraved”). Disney’s endeavors have been largely profitable, typically with a number of exhibits operating concurrently; in truth, inside its three-decade reign as a magic kingdom in Instances Sq., Disney exhibits have notched up a mind-boggling mixed 25,000 performances—and counting.
Dreamworks adopted in Disney’s massive, yellow footsteps with “Shrek the Musical;” New Line Cinema helped underwrite its properties “Hairspray” and “The Wedding ceremony Singer,” MGM Onstage was behind “Legally Blonde,” “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang” and “Some Like It Scorching” (the second Broadway model!); Columbia Dwell Stage, a division of Columbia Photos, introduced musical variations of their properties “Groundhog Day” and “Tootsie” to Broadway. Common Photos (as a part of quite a few completely different consortiums) was a pioneer in bringing “The Finest Little Whorehouse in Texas” to Broadway, again in 1978, in change for the movie rights and struck one of popular culture’s most prodigious gushers by shepherding “Depraved” to the stage (guess who’s distributing this 12 months’s movie model?). Sony Theatricals licensed one in every of their most enduring and invaluable mental properties, your pleasant neighborhood Spider-Man, to Broadway in 2011’s “Spider-Man: Flip Off the Darkish.” Alas, it didn’t make many buddies and closed as the most important flop in Broadway historical past, dropping $60 million of its funding; Sony did a lot better with its Michael Jackson catalogue in “MJ The Musical.”
Selling mental property for Broadway within the twenty first Century just isn’t with out its challenges.
There must be a stability between one thing recognizable for followers and one thing compelling by itself phrases for brand new clients. The branding synergy between a beforehand common film model and its new stage equal can grow to be more and more determinate, at occasions even suffocating. The poster artwork and costume design idea for 2007’s “Legally Blonde” was intensely much like its display antecedent; in any case, there was no method that MGM On Stage was going to waste its branding {dollars} by re-titling their new musical as “Elle!” or “What, Like It’s Onerous?” One has sympathy for the patrons who spent $125 every for his or her tickets and have been stunned to not discover Reese Witherspoon showing on-stage.
The stage analogues of “Ghost,” “A Christmas Story,” “College of Rock,” “Fairly Lady” and “Beetlejuice” have been additionally significantly beholden to their movie predecessors, immediately deploying earlier logos, designs and visible results. In reality, “Younger Frankenstein,” “Ghost,” “College of Rock,” “Physician Zhivago” and “Beetlejuice” interpolated signature songs from the film variations into their new scores, banking on the idea that audiences would have been upset to not hear, say, the film theme “Someplace My Love” in a theater piece based mostly on “Physician Zhivago.” The creators of “The Addams Household” stage musical have been decided by no means to make use of the tv present’s immortal theme track in its rating. Apparently, audiences throughout its pre-Broadway tour in Chicago have been, to say the least, dismayed to not hear that beloved tune. A licensing contract was rapidly drawn up and: Da-da-da-dum—Snap! Snap!
Nonetheless, though there appears to be a unending stream of movie variations, not all of them are slavish or unimaginative.
Probably the most profitable of those variations tended to contain much less well-known cinematic IP which gave the theatrical artistic groups extra room to increase their wings into extra unpredictable instructions. “Billy Elliot” was a British movie from 2000 that garnered modest business and significant success, however the musical model of this Cinderella story gained the 2008 Tony Award for Finest Musical, in addition to 9 different Tonys. One other non-commercial undertaking, an Israeli film from 2007 known as “The Band’s Go to,” was given the Broadway therapy and was such a departure from the same old Broadway sound-and-fury that it captivated audiences and gained ten Tonys (together with Finest Musical).
Maybe it’s the smaller movies, with much less extra baggage of branding and preconceived notions that show extra adaptable to the crucial expectations of the day; “The Bridges of Madison County,” “Waitress,” and this season’s “Days of Wine and Roses” (in addition to “The Outsiders,” which additionally had its personal well-known fictional supply to reside as much as) have been extra intimate musical narratives that engaged their cinematic inspirations in a much less bombastic method, took what they wanted from their mental properties, and supplied audiences their very own, new theatrical vocabulary.
Now, let’s assume that you simply’re a intelligent—if not artful—Broadway producer (assume away!!). You may hit the trifecta by adapting a preferred movie or TV present into a success Broadway stage musical after which adapt that stage present right into a full-blown cinematic property; three bites on the IP apple, because it have been. You’d even be lining up behind “Candy Charity,” “9,” and the current movie of “Imply Ladies” amongst others. That form of luck solely occurs to some Bialystocks and Blooms on the market—and, after all, it even occurred to the producers of “The Producers.”
*(So as: “Nights of Cabiria,” “By no means on Sunday,” “The World of Henry Orient,” “A Gap within the Head,” “The House,” “La Strada,” “Exodus,” “Georgy Woman,” “All About Eve,” “Make Mine Mink,” “Some Like It Scorching,” “Smiles of a Summer season Night time”).
Laurence Maslon collaborated on the PBS six-part sequence “Broadway: The American Musical” and is the host of the weekly radio program, “Broadway to Predominant Road,” on WLIW-FM.
American Masters, produced by The WNET Group, brings Broadway and Past to the New York/CT/NJ space this Could and June. When you reside within the tri-state space, go to 13.org/broadway for extra info.