Broadway definitely doesn’t have enough superhero musicals, so it’s great to see that the adventures of the mutant princess with cryokinetic powers will soon get the show tune treatment.
Get ready: “Frozen — the Musical” is coming.
It was only a matter of time before the Disney movie that grossed $1.25 billion worldwide and spawned the colossal hit “Let It Go” became a Disney musical that might match “Hamilton” in blockbusterness. The show’s scheduled for the spring of 2018, preceded by an out-of-town tryout in the summer of 2017.
Let’s hope it’s more engaging than Disney’s touring “Frozen on Ice” extravaganza.
The team of Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez will contribute new tunes to their original score, though it’s a safe bet that “Let It Go” will be in the Broadway show, and that it will be reprised at some point. Maybe even twice! How could it not? It always felt like an old-school 11 o’clock anthem marooned in a movie anyway.
Interestingly, the soundtrack was barely edged out by Taylor Swift’s “1989” for best-selling album of 2014 — the target demographics are basically the same, which should make Disney’s marketing plan for Broadway pretty straightforward.
Another piece of good news is that the movie’s writer and co-director, Jennifer Lee, will pen the show’s book, further preserving the integrity of that huge blockbuster.
If there’s a curve ball at all, it might be thrown by the show’s director, Alex Timbers, who’s helmed such left-field tuners as “Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson” and the Imelda Marcos disco pageant “Here Lies Love.” Timbers was also behind one of the most impressive staging feats in recent memory with the climactic fight in the otherwise blah musical “Rocky.”
The 2017-18 season should be a hot one, because another high-profile adaptation of a blockbuster is meant to land: “To Kill a Mockingbird,” newly adapted from Harper Lee’s best-seller by Aaron Sorkin — most recently the screenwriter of “Steve Jobs,” “The Social Network” and TV’s “The Newsroom” (and before that “The West Wing”). Sadly this won’t be a musical.
Sorkin’s become famous for writing sermonizing speeches and extended “walk and talk” scenes. The first one should be gravy considering the source material. As for the second, we’ll assume the play’s producers have a big treadmill budget.