A new musical adaptation of the film classic Some Like It Hot is in the works, with a Broadway premiere slated for 2020. The project hails from the Shubert Organization and Craig Zadan and Neil Meron, the team behind NBC’s roster of live musicals.
The show will feature a score by Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman (the team behind the sounds of Hairspray, Catch Me If You Can, and Disney’s upcoming Mary Poppins Returns), plus a book by playwright Matthew Lopez (whose two-part epic The Inheritance currently plays London’s Young Vic). Casey Nicholaw (Tony-nominated this season for Mean Girls) will direct and choreograph.
Shaiman and Wittman are no strangers to the Marilyn Monroe canon, having previously penned songs for Bombshell, the fictional Monroe bio-musical in the NBC series Smash. A real-life stage presentation of Bombshell, produced by Zadan and Meron, is long-gestating.
The 1959 Billy Wilder comedy was previously adapted for the stage with Jule Styne, Bob Merrill, and Peter Stone’s Sugar, which opened on Broadway in 1972, going on to earn four Tony nominations and play over 500 performances.
Inspired by the French film Fanfare of Love, Some Like It Hot follows two Prohibition-era jazz musicians (played on screen by Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon) who witness a mob hit and go into hiding by disguising themselves as members of an all-female band. Through their escape plot, the two become enamored with with the band's singer and ukulele player, Sugar (Monroe).