Director Seth Gordon may have been busy helming desultory slow-motion beach workouts in scattershot big-budget comedies, but that doesn’t mean he’s taken his eye off the further adventures of his directorial debut, The King Of Kong. For years, there’s been discussion of turning Gordon’s documentary about the competition for the Donkey Kong world championship into a narrative film, but now it seems Gordon is taking it another direction—specifically, to the stage. IGN reports the project is being turned into a musical, which means it’s time for you to finally realize your dreams of crafting a big Broadway number based on your devotion to the old arcade game. (Though, if you keep the references vague, you could probably convince people your torch song about Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy’s Kong Quest is actually a lament for the original.)
Asked about the new adaptation during a junket for Baywatch, Gordon replied, “Yeah, some scripts have been written—we’re actually working on a musical right now, which is pretty great…I think it lends itself to that – there’s such a melodrama, and so many of the characters are actually musicians, and the music of the games, too, is a thing.” Indeed, music in the games is a thing, which probably makes the creative team behind The Wizard feel dumb as hell for not turning it into a Fred Savage-starring Busby Berkeley carnival of whimsy.
Gordon didn’t shut the door on the idea of still having a feature film version down the line (“I always thought it’d be cool to flip the point of view and do it from Billy’s perspective”), but for now it’s all video game musicals. He said there’s already 15 songs written—and yes, scorekeeper and self-proclaimed king of the video game competition world Walter Day’s song “Museum Of My Heart” is one of them.
But that doesn’t mean you should relinquish your long-held dreams of writing show-stopping numbers based on your obsessive love of Donkey Kong, and Gordon’s documentary in particular. So here’s some potential song titles we offer, free for appropriation:
Bye-Bye To Boeing
A Quarter For Your Thoughts
You Put The ‘Joy’ In Joystick
Hot Sauce Sneer (Billy Mitchell’s Theme)
It’s Just Mario And Me
X Marks The Funspot
A Barrel Hit My Soul
There Are No Platforms In Heaven
UPDATE: As a theater-loving reader has pointed out, there technically already is a King Of Kong musical. Of course, it’s also a gag: King Of Kong: A Musical Parody ran several years ago, even picking up the award for Best Overall Musical at the 2014 New York Fringe Festival and earning a plaudit in the Times. Presumably, this is not what Seth Gordon has in mind, though given the humor in Baywatch, maybe it‘s not far off.