Forty years ago, Prince‘s Purple Rain film became a box office success. The official soundtrack topped the Billboard 200 for 24 weeks, and won three American Music Awards, two Grammys, and an Oscar. Now, the acclaimed film is set to be adapted into a Broadway musical.
“We can’t think of a more fitting tribute than to honor Prince and the Purple Rain legacy with this stage adaptation of the beloved story,” said L. Londell McMillan, chairman of The NorthStar Group, and Larry Mestel, founder and CEO of Primary Wave Music in a statement. “We are thrilled with our Broadway partners and creative team, who are bringing a theatricality to the film’s original fictional story. We can’t wait for a new generation to discover Purple Rain and for lovers of the original film and album to experience its power once again, this time live.”
Purple Rain centers around The Kid, a young musician on the rise contending with a complicated, abusive home life, new rivals, a disgruntled band, and a flourishing romance. It was Prince’s feature film debut.
The stage adaptation will be based on the original screenplay by Albert Magnoli and William Blinn, and will be written by two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, who’s currently dominating Broadway with his debut, Appropriate. Tony Award nominee Lileana Blain-Cruz will direct the forthcoming show.
“In some ways, I must have manifested this,” Jacobs-Jenkins told The New Yorker. Blain-Cruz noted, “What is somebody who deals with the heft of life going to do with something that by necessity has to live in a more effervescent lane? Branden’s like, ‘The two can coexist!’ And that’s what I’m excited about.”
The outlet detailed the new play “retained most of this story [from the film] but gave its extravagant characters a twenty-first-century makeover,” adding that “[Jacobs-Jenkins] aspires to write a Purple Rain more original than the original, faithful not to the film but to the songs and their ‘spiritual autobiography.’”
Additional production details will be announced in the coming months.
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