Pink Floyd's The Wall To Be On Broadway
 

Broadway Putting Up 'Wall'
By Ian Mohr

NEW YORK (Hollywood Reporter) - Pink Floyd's "The Wall" is coming to the Great White Way.

Miramax Films has pacted with former Sony Music chief Tommy Mottola to develop and produce a Broadway musical based on the seminal rock opera.

Roger Waters, who co-founded Pink Floyd in 1965 and conceived the semi-autobiographical 1979 concept double album, will write the Broadway show's book and arrange and orchestrate music for the stage production.

The album, which includes such Pink Floyd hits as "Another Brick in the Wall," "Comfortably Numb" and "Hey You," follows the journey of disillusioned rock star Pink, who looks back at the experiences that forged his neuroses. Like Pink, Waters lost his father in World War II.

Waters, who acrimoniously left Pink Floyd in the 1980s, sold the stage rights to the project to Miramax and Mottola, who runs his own Universal Music-based label, Casablanca Records.

Pink Floyd's "Wall" album, which is certified 23 times platinum and sits in third place on the list of best-selling albums ever, was adapted into a 1982 film released by MGM and starring Bob Geldof. Alan Parker ("The Commitments") directed the "Wall" feature from a script by Waters.

Pink Floyd's theatrical live performances of "The Wall" became the stuff of rock legend, and an $8 million production was staged in Berlin in 1990, coinciding with the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Said Waters of the planned Broadway show, "Now I can write in some laughs, notable by their absence in the movie."

Reuters/Hollywood Reporter

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PINK FLOYD THE WALL - BROADWAY UPDATE

Pink Floyd The Wall
Theatrical production, Broadway, NYC

This morning's edition of various publications, including The Hollywood Reporter, talk about the deal that has just been struck to bring Pink Floyd's seminal album The Wall, created by Roger Waters, to the theatre stage in New York City's Broadway.

They report that Miramax Films has pacted with Casablanca Records head Thomas Mottola to develop and produce a Broadway musical based on the rock opera. Roger Waters will write the Broadway show's book and arrange and orchestrate music for the stage production.

The project has been in the making for some time now - Roger has long wanted to bring it to the stage, and lighten the tone of at least some of the story. It has provided him with a distraction on long, boring flights over the years; Roger has been taking a notebook onto planes to work on the musical and refine it into an entertaining and accessable work for the general public, who might not even have heard the album.

We understand that the aim is to open the production within the next 12-18 months, and that it will include not just music from "The Wall", but other Pink Floyd songs as well as new music. As yet, these other songs have not been specified.

Rights on the project were sold by Waters to Miramax and Mottola, the former Sony Music head and founder of the management and production shingle the Mottola Co. Mottola initiated the "Wall" deal, bringing Miramax co-chairman Harvey Weinstein into the fold. Weinstein has experience as a producer on Broadway, having been credited on shows like "The Producers," "Gypsy" and Baz Luhrmann's "La Boheme." He also is bringing another rock 'n' roll project to Broadway with "All Shook Up."

Weinstein will oversee production on "The Wall" for Miramax along with VP of business and legal affairs Timothy Schmidt, and director of creative affairs Heidi Herman.

"I am thrilled to be involved with bringing 'The Wall' to Broadway and to give new generations the opportunity to see this legendary show," Weinstein told the Hollywood Reporter. "I am also delighted to be working with music geniuses Tommy Mottola and Roger Waters, who are sure to make the music rock again."

Said Mottola: "There are few projects as timeless as 'The Wall.' Even after two decades since its first release, 'The Wall' continues to break through every generational, socioeconomic and political boundary. When I first thought of bringing this event to Broadway, I knew I could not do it without the visionary talents of Roger Waters and of course my dear friend Harvey Weinstein and the wealth of experience of his Miramax team."

Said Waters of the planned Broadway show, "Now I can write in some laughs, notable by their absence in the movie."

As more detail becomes available (including dates and the venue) we will of course bring them to you.

Great... an incredible album and one of my favourite movies is now going to be made into a broadway show... and improved with "laughs"? - sounds like that South Park episode... we need to save an artist's work from the artist.

They were one of the great bands of all time. It's just not the same though without Waters. Gilmore does alright, but his stuff just doesn't seem to be as good. I'll still buy any album with their name on it though.

I think this might do very well, if they kept to the central atmosphere of the play. Of course, seeing that this is broadway, it can not be as dark as the album or the movie's version.

Did anyone see the stage production of The Who's "Tommy"? I thought that it did well.

I saw it too. I was dissapointed because it had a happy ending. The record and the movie did not have a happy ending. But, I guess they had to do it so it would be on Broadway.

I enjoyed it. A friend of our daughter #1 played The Acid Queen in one of the road shot troupes.

I'm a huge Pink Floyd fan, and I think that the movie is very over rated. This is going to suck.

I have always thought that The Wall was always meant to be made into a play. Maybe it's just me, but there was always that musical feel to the entire album. The movie was overated, though the cartoon portions of it are classic.

Who do you think will get to play Pink?I think Sebastion Bach,David Cassidy and Donny Osmond have all had their own Broadway shows within the last few years.Think one of them will want to do it?:p I personally don't think I am ready to see The Wall with a dance sequence and a chorus line.

I really hope this goes on tour.

I'll be going if it does -- I now live accross the street from the music hall it'd be performed in :D

Holy crap!! This is.....sort of amazing....i suppose it could terribly flop, or be done reeeally well....im surprised roger waters signed off on it.

So, I was gonna be really cool when this was first posted and tell my two kids who are heavily into musical theatre about it.

They both already knew.

It could make to good musical -- depending on the producers, of course.

Another concept album that would be interesting to do in Broadway is "The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway" by Genesis. It will be one weird musical play, but if done properly, it would be a good one.

-Update-

All in all, it's a new Wall
by BAZ BAMIGBOYE, Daily Mail 08:56am 11th March 2005

Pink Floyd's Roger Waters is about to bring together a top team to present the fantasy album The Wall on the stage.

Waters has been adapting the album he created for a theatrical presentation and I understand that once the writer Lee Hall has finshed working with Stephen Daldry on Billy Elliot (which, by the way, is looking terrific!), he will join Waters on The Wall.

Another major name who could join the project is Adrian Noble. But Noble has several shows and a film on the go this year, so he couldn't possibly work full-time on The Wall until next year.

The show is about a rock star who has become fed up with the world of rock 'n' roll. He bemoans the misfortunes of his life, detailing each slight and setback as 'another brick in the wall'.

The Wall has been staged as a concert (which I attended) in Berlin just after the Wall there came down, and as a movie with Bob Geldof and Bob Hoskins.

But Waters wants to add several new aspects to the story, and also include songs from other Pink Floyd albums - such as Money, from the phenomenally bestselling Dark Side Of The Moon.

When Hall and Noble officially climb up the Wall, the various producers, who include the movie chief Harvey Weinstein and music executive Tommy Mottola, may decide to open the show in London.

However, there's a possibility that it could go to Broadway first. One idea (since rejected, I gather) was to open The Wall in a non-West End location such as the London Dome, for example.

Anyway, not a lot will happen before the middle of next year, so we'll all scale the Wall then.