12 more Broadway musicals based on films we’d like to see on the big screen

The original Heathers film predated Mean Girls by 16 years, but the musicals based on the movies were staged in more rapid succession. Though the two have some surface similarities—a high school setting and an outsider who infiltrates a trio of popular girls with malicious intent—Heathers has a much darker tone and a real ’80s vibe. The musical based on Heathers never actually made it to Broadway—it ran off-Broadway for about six months in 2014 and was later staged in London’s West End. Still, if they can make the Mean Girls musical work on screen, surely some aspiring filmmaker can find a way to do the same for Heathers. The closest thing we’ve gotten so far is a high school production in .

This one is interesting because the musical, which just opened on Broadway last year and is still running, is the only one on this list not based on a fictional film. It’s based on a Peabody-winning documentary of the same name about a group of autistic adults preparing to attend a spring formal dance. It’s so significantly different from the source material that revisiting How To Dance In Ohio as a movie wouldn’t feel like a retread of the source material. The stage version features autistic performers in the roles of the autistic characters, also a must for any future film adaptation.

Compare the knee-high boots worn by the characters during the winter talent show performance in the original Mean Girls to the thigh-high ones they wear in the new movie and you can see the influence of drag fashion on pop culture in the last decade (hat tip to musical theater YouTuber for pointing that out). Kinky Boots and its success on Broadway was a big part of the trend. The musical, based on a 2005 film about a men’s shoe manufacturer who pivots to making fabulous boots for drag queens, became a smash hit with critics and audiences in 2013. With music by Cyndi Lauper and a book by Harvey Fierstein, this Tony-winning musical is ripe for a film version. If they can get Billy Porter to reprise his Tony-winning role as Lola, even better.

Who looks at the bleak story of a pair of cellmates suffering in an Argentine prison and thinks to themselves, “Isn’t this a great idea for a musical?” Kander and Ebb, that’s who. Improbable as it sounds, Kiss Of The Spider Woman debuted on Broadway in 1993 and went on to win seven Tony Awards, including Best Musical and Best Actress for Chita Rivera as the titular Spider Woman. Apparently, we’re not the only ones who think a big-screen version of this musical is long overdue. A new feature film starring Jennifer Lopez in the Rivera role was and is set to begin filming later this year.

Legally Blonde wasn’t a big hit when it opened on Broadway in 2007, lasting only about a year. But it has subsequently earned a cult following among musical fans thanks to the efforts of MTV. Many of these fans were first exposed to this version on MTV, which aired a filmed staging of the production in full (also known as a pro shot), which is still available to stream on . The network even commissioned a reality competition series in search of the next Elle Woods. Although it didn’t stray too far from the original movie, the show was full of bouncy numbers and impressive choreography, plus an all-star cast that included Laura Bell Bundy, Christian Borle, and Annaleigh Ashford. A new big screen version could bring in a whole new generation of fans, but as we , it doesn’t even have to be good to succeed; it just has to have a familiar title.

An older example of the movie-to-musical-to-movie pipeline is Promises, Promises, which was based on the Billy Wilder masterpiece The Apartment. The musical has a solid pedigree, featuring the smooth, jazzy orchestrations of Burt Bacharach, lyrics by Hal David, and a book by Neil Simon. Yes, this is the show that brought us “Turkey Lurkey Time,” but it also includes “I’ll Never Fall In Love Again.” The Broadway revival in 2010—starring Sean Hayes, Kristin Chenoweth, and Tony Goldwyn—added even more familiar Bacharach tunes like “I Say A Little Prayer” and “A House Is Not A Home.” A new movie version could work well as a period piece with the right talent attached. We’re casting it in our heads right now.

There are Broadway adaptations that merely translate a movie wholesale from screen to stage, and then there are those that take the opportunity to make significant changes for a modern audience. Some Like It Hot is the latter. Unlike other recent shows with cross-dressing leads (looking at you, Tootsie and Mrs. Doubtfire), this one doesn’t ignore changing attitudes towards gender fluidity and lets one of its stars discover the fullness of their identity through their drag persona. This version, with a book by Matthew López and Amber Ruffin, also changes the Marilyn Monroe role to a woman of color, but it’s not just a surface alteration. This Sugar sings about how much she loved going to the movies as a young girl, but was only allowed to sit in the balcony of the theater. If you’re going to reinterpret a movie as masterful and beloved as Some Like It Hot, you’d better have something new to bring to it. This musical does.

A Spamalot movie actually came very close to happening. Back in 2018, 20th Century Fox announced of the hit musical based (loosely) on Monty Python And The Holy Grail, with a script by the show’s book writer Eric Idle and directed by Casey Nicholaw, who brought Mean Girls to the stage, among many others. Shooting was supposed to begin in 2019, but Disney’s acquisition of Fox jammed up the works, and then there was a pandemic. There was talk of it , but Idle claimed last year that it had been killed off for good. A revival of the show opened on Broadway last fall, but we’re still holding out hope that the film version is just resting and not definitely dead (sorry, wrong Python sketch).

We may very well see a film based on Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical version of Sunset Blvd. come to theaters in the near future. For those keeping track, that’s the third Billy Wilder film on this list. There’s just something inherently melodramatic about his work that lends itself to musical adaptations. The show has been staged in various incarnations all over the world, and is set to return to Broadway in 2024, with Nicole Scherzinger playing the lead role of Norma Desmond. She’ll be joining a long line of Broadway legends who have donned the iconic turban on stage, including Patti LuPone, Betty Buckley, Elaine Paige, Rita Moreno, and Glenn Close. It looks like it will be Close, though, who brings the delusional former film star back to the screen. We haven’t gotten any official updates recently, but in an interview on the red carpet at the 2022 Met Gala, Close said. “We’re getting closer, believe it or not. We’re getting closer.” Which gives us the opportunity to say that Close is getting closer to her close-up, Mr. DeMille.

Waitress, the popular Broadway musical based on the 2007 indie comedy starring Keri Russell as an aspiring pie baker trapped in an abusive marriage, has actually played in movie theaters already. Sort of. A pro shot of a live performance recorded in 2021 and starring Sara Bareilles, who also wrote the music for the show, was distributed by Fathom Events last December. It earned positive reviews and made the top 10 at the box office the week it premiered. Perhaps that success will get the ball rolling for a new film based on the musical. We wouldn’t mind seeing Bareilles return in a new adaptation.

If you’re already scoffing at this suggestion, hear us out. We’re not saying the original Xanadu film holds up. It’s an ’80s cheese-fest of epic proportions, even if it does have Gene Kelly roller skating in it. It’s also the only film on this list that started out as a musical on screen, but technically that version was inspired by a Rita Hayworth film called Down To Earth, and that wasn’t a musical. So we’re saying it counts. The Broadway version, which opened the same year as Legally Blonde, makes great use of the energetic electronic score with tracks by Electric Light Orchestra and Olivia Newton-John. If a movie were to lean into that cheesiness, while incorporating some of the Hayworth movie back into the story, it could be something really fun and special.

Mel Brooks followed up the massive success of The Producers with a musical version of another fantastic film, Young Frankenstein, but it didn’t quite live up to its predecessor. For one thing, The Producers is about the making of a Broadway show, so the transition to the stage was a natural fit. Young Frankenstein, however, is a spoof of classic horror films. Which is why we think it should come full circle and back to the screen. ABC had planned to air a live version of the musical in 2020, but it was scrapped due to the pandemic. We hope that still leaves the door open for a future musical film version.