Cyndi Lauper, who picked up a best original score Tony Award in 2013 for her first foray into Broadway musicals, Kinky Boots, has locked down her next project in the field.
The pop veteran will write music and lyrics for a Broadway-bound stage musical adaptation of the 1988 Mike Nichols screen comedy, Working Girl, which starred Melanie Griffith as Tess McGill, a frustrated secretary from Staten Island trying to make inroads into the corporate business world. She takes advantage of the absence of her duplicitous boss, Katharine Parker (Sigourney Weaver), to put forward a merger deal, initially unaware that her strategic partner (Harrison Ford) is romantically involved with Katharine.
Playwright Kim Rosenstock, a writer for six seasons on the Fox sitcom New Girl, will pen the book for the musical, working from Kevin Wade’s original screenplay for the Twentieth Century Fox movie. The show will be produced by Fox Stage Productions and Aged in Wood Productions,
In a joint statement Tuesday, Robyn Goodman of Aged in Wood and Bob Cohen of Fox Stage said: “Working Girl was a groundbreaking depiction of a working-class woman determined to succeed in the cutthroat, male-dominated corporate world of the 1980s. Funny and smart, this now-iconic tale is just as relevant today.”
“I love the film, and its story about a woman’s very unconventional road to success in the ‘80s is something I know a lot about,” added Lauper, who became a star overnight with her 1983 debut solo album, She’s So Unusual, which spawned the hits “Girls Just Want to Have Fun,” “Time After Time” and “She Bop.”
The movie was nominated for six Academy Awards, including for best picture, director, lead actress Griffith and supporting actresses Weaver and Joan Cusack. It won an Oscar for Carly Simon’s theme song, “Let the River Run.” A production timeline for the musical version will be announced at a later date.
Fox Stage is currently represented on Broadway with the new musical Anastasia; the studio division is developing stage adaptations of Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Mrs. Doubtfire, The Devil Wears Prada and All About Eve. Goodman has been behind a number of Tony-winning musicals, including Avenue Q, In the Heights and Cinderella.