Will Ferrell and Kristin Wiig are teaming up to help develop a musical based on the nonfiction book Everything Is Coming Up Profits: The Golden Age of Industrial Musicals.
Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman, the mega-songwriters perhaps best known for the Broadway musical version of Hairspray, are attached to write the music, while Marc Platt, the Wicked producer who has the musical La La Land expanding in theaters, is attached to produce the project, which was picked up by Amblin Partners.
Steven Levenson, a writer-producer on the Showtime period drama Masters of Sex, is on board to pen the script.
Released in 2013, Everything Is Coming Up Profits by Steve Young and Sport Murphy focused on little seen but lavishly made musical shows that were made exclusively for blue chip corporations.
From the 1950s to the 1980s, America’s top companies produced these live motivational productions for their employees, particularly their sales forces, to educate them and pump them up on upcoming products.
The book traced the making and catalogued these long-forgotten gems that were made by top talent as well as those who were always looking for their shot at stardom.
