Smash is getting one step closer to Broadway.
A musical adaptation of the NBC television series, also entitled Smash, is now slated to open on Broadway in the 2024-2025 season, producers Robert Greenblatt, Neil Meron and Steven Spielberg said Wednesday. The production has tapped Susan Stroman, the Tony Award-winning director of The Producers, who is currently working on the new musical, New York, New York, as its director.
Shaiman and Wittman, the composers of Hairspray and the currently running Broadway musical, Some Like It Hot, are writing the score, which includes new material, as well as many songs the duo wrote for the television show, including the Emmy-nominated “Let Me Be Your Star.”
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The television show, which ran on NBC from 2012-2013, starred Debra Messing, Jack Davenport, Megan Hilty, Katharine McPhee and Christian Borle and followed their ups and downs as they mounted musicals for Broadway, including Bombshell, a fictional musical about the life of Marilyn Monroe. The original idea for the series came from Spielberg (he was a producer on Aaron Sorkin’s 2007 play, The Farnsworth Invention and has seen his films, such as Catch Me If You Can, adapted for the stage). Playwright Theresa Rebeck created the series and wrote the pilot.
“Smash is near and dear to my heart, and it was always my hope that a musical inspired by the show would eventually come to the stage. We now have an incredible creative team, and I’m looking forward to completing the Smash journey which began with my producing partners over ten years ago,” Spielberg said.
The stage adaptation will also see its characters trying to create Bombshell, but the production says it will “also depart liberally from the series.” Rick Elice (Jersey Boys) and Bob Martin (The Prom) are writing the book to the musical. Joshua Bergasse, the choreographer for the television show, will reprise his role for the stage adaptation.
The Broadway show has been in the works for years. Greenblatt and other team members began talking about bringing the show to a bigger stage after a 2015 one-night charity benefit concert version of Bombshell, which featured performances by the television cast. It was announced for Broadway in 2020, and the team held a developmental workshop of the show last summer.
“Ever since the show ended in 2012, not a week goes by that someone doesn’t ask us when will they see Smash as a musical. We think we’ve come up with something the die-hard series fans will love but that will also be exciting for people who never saw an episode of the show. And above all else it will be a valentine to the Broadway musical and the exhilarating rollercoaster ride of bringing one to life,” Meron said.
