The story and glory of love are making their way to the stage.
The most recent film to be adapted for the stage is 1988 classic Beaches. The film starred Bette Midler and Barbara Hershey and was based on Iris Rainer Dart’s novel of the same name.
74-year-old Dart spoke with ET about the musical adaptation of the film, three decades after it hit the small screen. Dart told ET “I feel very lucky, first of all, to be my age and doing this. The theater has much less ageism than the movie and television business.” Dart also added that Beaches is expected to first hit the West End in London in 2019 before coming to Broadway, “One of the things I’ve learned” she said after her People in the Picture straight went straight to Broadway, “is to never open a show on Broadway before you’ve been out of town.”
Currently, the project is in the workshop stage, with the creative team rewriting the script and working on some new song additions. “We’re just listening, refining, redoing and seeing which songs work and which ones don’t,” Dart explains. There are no confirmed castings as of yet, however, production execs are hoping to incorporate talent from previous productions of the musical.
Looks like reimagining movie classics for the stage is becoming a trend as the Beaches adaptation follows a very successful run of Groundhog Day as well as the upcoming Pretty Woman: The Musical.
