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| re: The Batman Musical | |
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rockfenris2005 10:07 am UTC 04/29/21 |
| In reply to: | re: The Batman Musical - Evan 07:29 am UTC 04/29/21 |
Thank you :-) Let's see what I've got in my archives. Quote: DB: I heard that at one point you were trying to put together a Batman musical on Broadway. What happened there? TB: They approached me about that and I was interested because I liked Jim Steinman; I met him a few times, and thought he did some great stuff. But at the end of the day, seeing this guy prancing around and singing, I don’t know. Look what happened to Spider-Man, right? [Laughs] End Quote. That's from a Tim Burton interview from 17 December 2014 in the Daily Beast. Here's another one from Gregg Maday, who started the whole project. Quote: As Warner Bros. tries again to hit the jackpot on Broadway with a $21 million musical adaptation of Beetlejuice, the future of its theatre arm remains uncertain. The Hollywood film studio first considered creating a division to produce live stage shows after witnessing Disney’s success bringing Beauty and the Beast to Broadway in 1994. The popular musical made over $35 million in ticket sales during its first year on the Great White Way, and spawned five replica productions in 1995. “I had been following the success of Disney,” explained its founder, Gregg Maday, “and it looked to me like our two companies were very similar in how they were structured, and how they viewed the business.” Like Disney, Warner Bros. had an extensive catalog of popular films that could be adapted, and also dabbled in the theme park and retail businesses. Maday recognized that mounting a Broadway show could create multiple revenue streams for Warner Bros. In addition to making money from ticket sales, “[e]ven a semi-successful show can restore an old movie’s luster in the DVD market and give rise to a slew of video games, road companies, toys, T-shirts and collectibles,” observed one writer. “When it works, it can be magic,” commented Mark Kaufman, who now leads the theatre division. But, when Maday “started to pitch the idea internally, it was not very well received,” he said. “No one was focused on it,” and “[n]obody cared,” he remembered. For a Hollywood film studio, “it did not look like it was a mainstream business,” Maday stated. Madam continued to push for a theatre division, and he recalled that “it finally got to the point where I got every division head at the studio to get together in one room, and I made a formal presentation to them about how this would benefit every division in the company if we were to get into the theatre business.” “My point of view was that it was a dream stream of revenues,” explained Maday. Warner Bros. could produce its own shows like Disney and benefit from the “enormous upside to owning something,” and it could also license its films to other Broadway producers to adapt like MGM and “create another form of revenue.” After the presentation, Terry Semel, the co-chief executive officer at Warner Bros, glanced around the conference room. “Whoever got all these people together should really be rewarded,” Semel joked. “It is very difficult to do that,” he said, telling Maday to “just take some money, and go do something.” Maday hired prolific Broadway producer Manny Azenberg as a consultant, and started looking through the Warner Bros. library. “I put together a 22-page study of all the different titles that I thought could translate to the stage,” Maday recalled. But, of all the Academy Award-winning films that Warner Bros. had produced over the years, Maday chose to make a musical about the D.C. superhero “Batman.” The composer of the chart-topping rock album Bat Out of Hell, Jim Steinman, learned about the show, “and he really put a full court press on” to write the music, Maday remembered. “Jim thought that he was the perfect guy,” he said, adding that Steinman’s “gothic rock n’ roll did translate to that world.” “This is a very exciting project that Jim was born to write,” commented Steinman’s manager, David Sonenberg, while a contract was still being negotiated. To write the script, executives from Warner Bros. approached veteran playwright David Ives. “Even though he was new to the form, I think that he wrote a terrific book,” Maday commented. It focused on the formation of “Batman,” and “I always thought the beginning of ‘Batman’ was like Hamlet,” he said. Tim Burton, who directed two “Batman” films for Warner Bros., expressed some interest in directing the musical. He was disappointed in how the later films released in the “Batman” franchise were written, and he wanted to “re-establish his original vision” and “redeem the soul of the ‘Batman’ series,” according to one industry insider. But, after Dance of the Vampires, another musical with songs from Jim Steinman and a script from David Ives, shut after 56 performances on Broadway in 2003, nobody wanted to be linked to a show from the same creative team. “I could not find a director,” Maday complained. The planned musical about the “Caped Crusader” collapsed. End Quote That's from 28 March 2019 in Forbes. > That was extremely entertaining! Thank you so much for > posting it. I always thought a Batman musical if done > properly, would’ve been huge on Broadway. It would’ve been > wild and exciting. Especially with Jim’s involvement. I > wish it had happened. Didn’t Tim Burton’ make some kind of > statement regarding it years ago? I can’t remember what he > said or if he was enthusiastic about it or not? | |
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