In defense of the screen to stage adaptation.

While watching Honeymoon In Vegas the other night, I took a twitter poll asking for a quick thumbs up or thumbs down on the idea of making Honeymoon into a musical (a project that is currently in development).

Thanks to my recent linking of my twitter and facebook status, I got a flock of a lot of responses before you could say "Wasn't Sarah Jessica Parker in that movie?".

Here are a few:

Enough with the "from the screen to the stage" and "remake" crap, please. 

There are so many amazing new works we can enjoy... :)

I totally agree with this [the above post] in the nicest way possible. :)

Aren't there any original ideas?

I think they need to start bringing originality back to Broadway.

No more musicals that were movies - unless it's Beetlejuice!

Yikes.  Insert sound of clawing kitty here.  

Original sounds awesome.  And it's what I'd prefer any day of the week.  But it's not as easy, prevalent or desired as you think. 

I've written about the rise of screen to stage musicals before, but this time, let's look at stats on originals: 

This season, there will be only three completely original new musicals on Broadway that were not based on any pre-existing source material, movie or otherwise:  13, Title of Show and The Story of My Life. 

What do they have in common?  I'll give you a hint.  They all closed.

Last season, there were only three original musicals on Broadway as well:  In The Heights, Passing Strange and Glory Day (plural cruelly omitted purposefully).  Kudos to Heights, but disappointment for the other two.

Two seasons ago?  No originals.

Three years back?  Two:  In My Life and Drowsy Chaperone.  Chaperone worked in a small window, and then went away.

Four years?  Two:  Brooklyn and Spelling Bee (The Bee was actually based on an improv play, but since the play hadn't achieved any sort of notoriety, we'll include it here).  The Bee succeeded but the Brooklyn investors would have been better off buying a bridge.

What's interesting about these stats is not the winners.  I just named 10 shows and 2 recouped and that's consistent with the commonly quoted stat that 1 in 5 shows make money.  We're on par.

What's alarming is that the other 8 shows were very quick flame outs, resulting in a loss of the entire capitalization or close to it (or in some cases, maybe even more?).

Now, all you tweeters  . . . knowing these much higher risk statistics, are you really surprised that Producers and Writers look to source material before their own brains for ideas?

Flip the analysis around and look at some of the most successful musicals during that same five year period:  Wicked, Jersey Boys, Lion King, Mamma Mia, and so on with un-originals and so on.

In fact, look at the longest running musicals of all time:  Only 2 originals in the top 10 (I don't count Oh! Calcutta!)

I love an original musical.  Falsettos is one of my favs.  But the fact is that their artistic degree of difficulty is exceptionally high (and those critics that scream about lack of original ideas on Broadway should score them like Olympic gymnasts and give them extra points for the attempt).  The financial risk is the highest, and they have a recent history of lower returns.

The truth is, some of those originals I mentioned above were simply not very good.  And despite the statistical history, a great show can always make this post null and void.  So anyone dissatisfied with the lack of originality on the GWW (Great White Way), should get out there and write a great show and I'll be the first to line up to produce it.

But we do have to remember that Broadway is a very specific place.  It's a very thin slice of real estate in the center of the world.  Producing and creating theater is different from producing and creating Broadway theater.  And original just doesn't always work here, whether we like it or not.

Think about it this way.  Broadway is like a museum.  You know, like MoMA.  Unfortunately, not every painter gets his art hung in MoMA, no matter how good they are.  It's a museum of modern art.  The people that go there, go to see a specific type.  That's what they want.  And the curators have to pick shows that are not only going to satisfy their patrons, but are going to thrill them. 

That doesn't mean that painters of other styles should stop painting.  It just means that MoMA might not be the place where their art has the best shot at success (interestingly enough - a heck of a lot of painters adapt their images from subjects or landscapes, don't they?)

So don't blame the Curators or the Producers or the Writers.  You might just want to pick a different museum.

Still sticking to your guns and think that what audiences really want is originality?  We wondered that same thing on 13 . . . and then we tested a tag line that called the show the most "original new musical on Broadway" (Title of Show used a similar hook).  The results were as follows:

6% of those surveyed were definitely interested in the show based on that tagline.
15% were intrigued by the tagline.
79% of those surveyed said that this tagline "made them NOT interested in seeing 13."

These results are another example of what those of us on the inside would prefer is not necessarily what the majority of our audience prefers.

So maybe that Beetlejuice idea isn't so bad after all . . .