Sony Pictures Classics has acquired North American and U.K. rights to Woody Allen's next film, "Nero Fiddled." It will be Allen's fifth feature to be released by SPC. Alec Baldwin, Penelope Cruz and Jesse Eisenberg lead an ensemble cast in the Rome-set story.
NEW YORK – The steady stream of movies being retooled into stage musicals so far has not tapped into the extensive Woody Allen vaults, but that will change when Bullets Over Broadway hits its title destination in 2013.
Producers Julian Schlossberg and Letty Aronson have announced that a musical based on Allen’s 1994 crime-caper comedy is in preparation for next year.
The show will feature a book by Allen, with additional creative team, dates, theater and casting to be announced. Rather than using a new score, the musical will draw upon existing songs from the 1920s, when the story is set.
Written by Allen and Douglas McGrath, the movie followed a struggling young playwright (played by John Cusack) forced by a Mobster backer to cast the thug’s no-talent bimbo girlfriend as a psychiatrist in the Broadway production of his new drama.
Nominated for seven Academy Awards, the film earned Dianne Wiest a second supporting actress Oscar for her role as a flamboyant grande dame of the theater.
Aronson (Allen’s sister) served as co-executive producer on the movie. Schlossberg and Aronson recently were lead producers of Relatively Speaking on Broadway, a triptych of comic one-acts by Allen, Elaine May and Ethan Coen.
Allen’s latest release, Midnight in Paris, is in the running for four Oscars Sunday night, including best picture.
