Some Like It Hot, a planned stage musical based on the great 1959 Billy Wilder comedy, has set its sights on a Fall 2021 Broadway opening, producers announced today.
The staging would mark the musical’s world premiere: A previously announced pre-Broadway engagement in Chicago has been canceled.
With a book by Matthew Lopez (The Inheritance), music by Marc Shaiman, lyrics by Shaiman and Scott Wittman (Hairspray), and direction/choreography by Casey Nicholaw (The Prom), Some Like It Hot has been in the development since at least 2018, with a 2020 debut initially planned.
Additional details for the 2021 staging – cast, venue, production dates – will be announced at a later date by producers the Shubert Organization and Neil Meron. Co-producers are Roy Furman, Robert Greenblatt and the Nederlander Organization.
Just the week prior to Broadway’s March 12 shutdown, producers announced plans for a now-scotched March 2-April 4 2021 pre-Broadway limited engagement at Chicago’s Cadillac Palace Theatre.
The stage adaptation of the classic film starring Tony Curtis, Jack Lemmon and Marilyn Monroe, was first announced in 2018 by producing team Neil Meron and Craig Zadan; Zadan died three months later, in August of that year.
The film was previously adapted for Broadway in 1972 as Sugar, which starred Robert Morse, Tony Roberts and Elaine Joyce. The new musical is unrelated to Sugar.
The Some Like It Hot 2021 opening comes as Broadway has been beset with recent closing-cancellation-postponement news. Just yesterday, Disney’s Frozen became Broadway’s first long-running production to announce that it would not return when the industry reopens from the ongoing pandemic shutdown.
Other newer or upcoming productions had already announced cancellations (Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Hangmen) or postponements (MJ, Caroline, or Change, Birthday Candles, Flying Over Sunset, Plaza Suite).
The Broadway League recently announced that previously purchased tickets for performances through Labor Day would be refunded or exchanged, but many, if not most, Broadway players don’t expect a general reopening prior to January 2021.