‘Pride’ Screenwriter Reveals Plans for Musical Adaptation

'Pride' Screenwriter Reveals Plans Musical Adaptation — Pride Still Cannes - H 2014
Courtesy of Festival de Cannes

The writer behind politically tinged U.K. comedy Pride has revealed he’s been in talks with the director to adapt the film into a stage musical.

Speaking at a special London screening of the film Saturday, Stephen Beresford said that he’d discussed the idea with Matthew Warchus, having convinced him over the course of a train ride that the adaptation would work.

“[Warchus] came up with nine reasons why we shouldn’t do it, but by the end of the journey we had turned them into reasons why we should,” Beresford told an audience at the ArtHouse Crouch End cinema. Speaking later on U.K. TV channel London Live, he added he had been “in talks” with West End producers.

“These days, when films are created, all those things, these possibilities, are taken into account when they are sorting out the rights. We’ll see,” he said.

Should it get the green light, Pride helmer Warchus would be ideally equipped to take on the project, having directed several West End and Broadway productions — winning three Tony Awards along the way — and first bringing to stage Matilda the Musical, based on the Roald Dahl book.

Starring a formidable lineup of U.K. and Irish talent, including Bill Nighy, Imelda Staunton, Dominic West, Paddy Considine, George McKay and Andrew Scott, Pride tells the true story of a group of gay rights activists who raised money to help families affected by the miners’ strike in 1984. Having premiered in the Directors’ Fortnight section in Cannes, where it won the Queer Palm award, it opened this week to a third-place position in the U.K. box office behind The Boxtrolls and Lucy. It is due for release in the U.S. on Sept. 26, with distribution by CBS Films.