Lin-Manuel Miranda is reportedly turning The Warriors into a stage musical
Miranda is reportedly set to come out and pla-ay with a musical adaptation of Sol Yurick's 1965 novel, also the basis for the 1979 Walter Hill film
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Lin-Manuel Miranda has reportedly lined up his next big theatrical project, as Variety reports that the Hamilton creator is apparently attached to a stage musical version of The Warriors. And while the project is technically based on Sol Yurick’s 1965 novel, it’s not hard to see this new adaptation as part of a slate of recent theatrical projects that have made flashy musicals out of Hollywood films like Walter Hill’s 1979 adaptation of the book. (Although we’re pretty sure Beetlejuice and Back To The Future had fewer attempted lethal beatings with baseball bats than this one might.)
To be fair, there are certain elements of Hill’s The Warriors that lend themselves pretty easily to the stage—most obviously the tendency of the movie’s gangs to dress in uniforms adopting larger-than-life personas. (And while the film itself is by no means a musical, Hill choreographs some of its key scenes to the soundtrack—most notably the sequence that sees the gangs of New York take to the streets to hunt the falsely accused Warriors as Martha And The Vandellas’ “Nowhere To Run” taunts them from the radio.)
It’s not clear what role, exactly, Miranda will play in the Warriors adaptation. His career has taken him pretty far afield from Broadway in recent years; 2021 saw him direct his first film, Netflix’s Tick, Tick…Boom!, while he’s also taking up a regular role penning song for Disney. (That’s in addition to being set to appear onscreen for the company in next year’s TV adaptation of the Percy Jackson books.) We’d be lying if we said we weren’t curious about what he’d do with this particular property: A huge part of The Warriors’ appeal is the grit and desperation that Yurick/Hill put on the page or screen, and it’s an open question of how much of that pain and grime can co-exist with the rhythms of musical theater.
19 Comments
Whatever your opinion is on Lin-Manuel Miranda, this news confirms it.
I say this as a lover of both the movie and musicals in general: I don’t see this.I mean, a Warriors-themed live stunt/dance show? Absolutely. Get a bunch of stunt performers and dancers to put on crazy costumes and do wild fights on stage with baseball bats. Absolutely. But I just can’t imagine the character of Ajax singing a ballad about how he tried to rape an undercover cop.
What if they sung about said rape in the standard, super-peppy, super-happy, Broadway-obligatory major-key?
So now I need to see Stomp do a version of this.
Sounds like something done in a Chicago improv theater in the early 2000s
I can’t dig iiiiiiiiiiiiiit!
It’s already almost a musical. But will they be a less to get rights to all that music ( expensive!), or will Lin-Manuel Miranda have to rewrite it all?
we don’t talk about swan swan!
Normally, almost any news of “yet another movie being turned into a Broadway musical” makes me roll my eyes, but I am weirdly excited about this. Probably mostly because the source material is just so weird and culty. It doesn’t feel like the usual nostalgic cash grab. (The movie has a cult following, but I don’t think it’s nearly so well known to be a sure hit based solely on that following like many other screen to stage adaptations.) I am cautiously optimistic. I’m really looking forward to the Hi Hats all dancing, no singing number.
Yeah, if the Internet existed in 1980s, io9 would have a post with people freaking out about “wait, someone is turning Little Shop of Horrors into a musical? That’s just stupid!”
The Warriors . . . is now a play-ay!
This comment is the best thing to come out of this announcement.
My only regret is that I have but one star to give to this comment.
I haven’t actually read the book, but based on the wikipedia summary I don’t believe he’s making a musical actually based on that rather than the movie.
Lin-Manuel Miranda needs to stop ruining things.
Won’t this just be West Side Story without the romance? I mean, the leader of the Jets is named Riff, and the name of Cyrus’s gang in The Warriors is the Riffs!
Annnnnnnd fuck this. Nope.