Prince of Egypt being adapted to stage

[Dan]

It would appear that DreamWorks has given Stephen Schwartz the greenlight to translate The Prince of Egypt as a stage musical. A concert reading of the first act is going to be held in New York in a few weeks. The show will be produced under DreamWorks Theatrical and it will be directed by Scott Schwartz, who recently directed the stage translation of Disney's Huchback of Notre Dame.

Source: http://www.broadway.com/buzz/181290/odd ... gypt-more/

[Ben]

Ooh, interesting! Both musicals, Schwartz aside, share a common tone and theme, so with the success of Hunchy on stage I can only wonder why it's taken DWA so long to translate POE.

Hopefully this means we might finally get a Blu-ray of the origins, film too!

[Dacey]

Not that I have the money to make a collection right now, but it's kinda baffling how few DW titles have made it to Blu-Ray. El Dorado, Sinbad, and even box office hits like Chicken Run and Shark Tale have yet to make it to the format.

[Ben]

Yep, especially considering they just celebrated a 20th anniversary and a DWA Collection of the "missing' films might have been a great way to get people to buy the "lesser" hits.

[EricJ]

Not really in favor of POE stage show. What exactly is the point? One of if not the best thing about the film is its spectacular use of traditional animation--the colors, shadows, camera work, fluidity--they all make it the classic that it is. Why mess with that?

Aside from the fact that Katzenberg tried to shoehorn his old "Stage-ready" 90's-Disney Beauty/Beast tricks into the movie--And no, I'm not just referring to "You're Playing With the Big Boys Now"; it's a surprisingly talky animated movie, with, like Hunchback, lots of dialogue scenes taking place in big nondescript locations like the desert and huge palace rooms. Even "When You Believe" seems to be the special-effects film-adaptation upgrade of a Big Stage Number of chorus crowds walking...

"Why POE?" is pretty much the same question as "Why Rocky?", "Why Elf, A Christmas Story and the Grinch onstage every Christmas?", and "Why Band Wagon, An American in Paris and Gigi all at once?"
Other studios have now officially jumped on Universal and Disney's money train, and with fewer composers writing new musicals (or who can afford to produce them), the money is now on corporate studios who prefer to market their existing products as existing "Marketing outreach opportunities"--Like Warner pimping their classic MGM-library musicals (they wanted to do a Batman musical at one point, but you can guess what happened), the optimistically desperate Dreamworks now wants to follow the success Universal had in pimping Shrek for a reasonably successful musical. Whether they wanted to "out-Disney" the Hunchback musical is pure speculation, since at this point, DWA is grasping at any corporate-direction straws they haven't tried yet.
Hopefully they'll have better luck than Paramount had with Ghost, or Fox had with Rocky, Warner/New Line had with Honeymoon in Vegas, or the Weinsteins had with their big self-hyped Finding Neverland musical. (Well, "hopefully", they'll have the same. )

[Ben]

Tony snubs aside, Neverland is a bit, fat, smashing hit that will play for a good few years, just to keep things accurate.

[Dan]

As noted on the front page, Stephen Schwartz was interviewed recently where a good chuck was about how the workshop for his stage musical adaptation of The Prince of Egypt was coming along and even revealing some of the creative process he's going through.

Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/asc ... 2639d26db2

[Ben]

Well it's about time!!

[Dan]

I'm keeping my eyes open for if they'll do pre-Broadway runs. Specifically if they do one in San Diego because if they do I am SO there.