SPIN CYCLE

Times on Great White Way are starting to seem Rocky

Low blow? The 1976 film Rocky is about to be a musical, with 2014 as the target date.
Low blow? The 1976 film Rocky is about to be a musical, with 2014 as the target date.

Yo, Broadway!

There’s a punchy, aspiring musical hoping to knock out New York next year: Rocky.

Yes, that Rocky - the rope-skipping, stairs-scampering, sides-of-beef-sparring Italian Stallion played by Sylvester Stallone in 1976. And then again in 1979. And 1982. And 1985. And 1990. And 2006.

The story of the underdog boxer who fights heavyweight champ Apollo Creed while finding love with shy pet shop clerk Adrian is “Gonna Fly Now,” from the ring to the stage of the Winter Garden Theatre (the current home of Mamma Mia!) by February.

This is not the first time in recent years boxing has had a bout on Broadway. Former heavyweight champion Mike Tyson’s one-man show Undisputed Truth hooked audiences and now is making rounds in a national tour.

But, Rocky? Maybe things are rockier on Broadway than we had thought.

What’s next, Flashdance?

Actually, yes. The stage adaptation of the 1983 movie about the “Maniac” welder-by day stripper-by-night, which has been touring the United States, was supposed to open in New York in August, but will likely open next spring, and “What a Feeling” that will be.

Rocky would hardly be the first time someone tried to make a stage success out of a Hollywood blockbuster (or even a Hollywood bust -Xanadu, anyone?). Titles from Sister Act and Legally Blonde to Shrek and The Full Monty have made their way from cinema to live theater. Others, like Hairspray, were movies, then became musicals, then became movies based on the musicals.

It got us thinking about other unlikely movies that could be manipulated into musicals.

And then we realized there were none left.

Bring It On, the cheerleader movie? Gimme a D-O-N-E! Horror flick Carrie? It too has been bloody done already.

A musical version of The Notebook has been in the works since 2011, but note that it has not been booked yet. The website thenotebookmusical.com says little other than “coming soon.”

Even a musical apparition of 1990’s Ghost - starring Patrick Swayze, Demi Moore and Whoopi Goldberg and some clay - had productions (before they, well, vanished) in England and New York. A national tour will visit U.S. haunts this fall.

And there’s a Kickstarter campaign for the development of American Psycho The Musical (which, like Carrie and The Notebook would be based on a movie that was based on a book). And if that’s not psycho enough, $24,726 of the $150,000 goal had been contributed by press time.

It’s now official, every movie has been tapped for its musical potential.

No, wait! There’s still Rocky II, Rocky III, Rocky IV, Rocky V and Rocky Balboa!

Yo, e-mail: [email protected] Spin Cycle is a weekly smirk at pop culture and a weekly segment on Little Rock’s KURB-FM, B98.5 at 7 a.m.Thursdays. Listen live and hear podcasts at b98.com.

Style, Pages 47 on 05/05/2013

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