The vulgarian moving picture (and its pal, that devil’s talkbox the television) may have helped to kill off legitimate theater, but more and more it seems like film is keeping Broadway alive, as patrons eagerly flock to see familiar stories gussied up with song and dance. Joining the many movie-based Broadway shows already in development—including Newsies, The Goonies, Rocky, a new version of Carrie, and even the Kevin Kline comedy Dave—is the Tim Burton sentimental spectacle Big Fish, which the film’s screenwriter John August says has recently been optioned for a stage version.
“This isn’t one of those announcements where some people had lunch and said, 'Hey, maybe let’s try to do a show,’” August wrote on his blog, eerily capturing the lunch we have seemingly every day around here. “It’s written. Two acts. Amazing songs. We’ve read it and sung it forty times for lots of different people.” August reports that he’s recently been in New York working with director and choreographer Susan Stroman and composer Andrew Lippa, with an eye on premiering Big Fish as early as the spring of 2012. That would make it the second major stage version of a Tim Burton film after Matthew Bourne’s Edward Scissorhands ballet became a sensation; obviously someone needs to option Ed Wood soon and start crafting a “Karloff Did Not Deserve To Smell My Shit” aria. [via Movieline]