©Disney(NEW YORK) — The Tony Award-winning Broadway musical Newsies closed in 2014, but you’ve got another chance to see it tonight, Saturday and next week…at a theater near you.
The creative team and original Broadway cast members — including current Supergirl star Jeremy Jordan — reunited to film a live performance at the Pantages Theater this past September. It will screen in theaters nationwide on February 16, 18 and 22 — visit Fathom Events to find out where it’s playing near you.
It’s a full-circle moment for Newsies, which began as a 1992 movie starring a young Christian Bale, with songs by Alan Menken, the composer behind The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin. Still, the movie flopped in theaters.
“It was at a very heady time where Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin were all opened or in production,” Menken tells ABC Radio. “And Disney said, ‘Let’s go ahead and make a live action movie.’ And there were a lot of wonderful things about it…but…it just did not make it with the public. They weren’t really ready for that kind of break-into-song musical.”
But surprisingly, the movie gained a cult following thanks to home video and cable airings.
“I think it was these cute boys, and the dancing, and I think this is the generation that has grown up with a real hunger for musical theater…and people just really embraced Newsies,” says Menken.
Eventually, the demand for a stage version of Newsies grew so insistent that Disney created one: it ran from 2012 to 2014 on Broadway, and then toured internationally. Now, it’s back in theaters, where it started. Will there eventually be another iteration?
“I’ve given up trying to predict what’ll happen with Newsies, or any project for that matter,” Menken laughs. “You just never know.”
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