I cover the film industry for a living, and as absurd as it is, it still doesn’t hold a candle to theater, where writing songs about a movie and hiring a washed-up sitcom star to play the lead are considered innovation. Case in point: Sylvester Stallone is teaming up with Wladimir and Vitali Klitschko, the two most boring heavyweight champions of all time, to produce a stage musical based on Rocky. Boxing and showtunes: two great tastes that taste great together. More than anything in the world, I want it to be true that Sly signed the contract with his fancy skull pen.

Stallone and the Klitschkos, who will produce Rocky: The Musical together with Kevin King Templeton of Stallone’s Rouge Marble shingle, announced the project in Hamburg on Monday.

“They kept jabbing me and jabbing me about it, and eventually I just got so bored that I agreed to everything they wanted.”

Stallone said in giving the pugilist classic the Andrew Lloyd Webber treatment he would be focusing on Rocky’s romantic side.
“At the end of the day, Rocky is a love story and he could never have reached the final bell without Adrian,” said Stallone. “To see this story coming to life on a musical stage makes me proud. And it would make Rocky proud.”

“At the end of the day, saying ‘at the end of the day’ doesn’t make the statement it prefaces any less ridiculous. A fictional character I created taught me that.”

In addition to co-producing, the Klitchko brothers will train the lead actor, who has not yet been cast, in the sweet science.

Holy shit, really? That’d be like getting Tim Duncan to mentor the cast of the next And1 mixtape. Crap, I just tried to explain a sports reference with an even more esoteric sports reference, didn’t I. Okay, how about this — the Klitschko brothers are to boxing what Ken Burns is to documentary.

Tony Award nominee Alex Timbers will direct. Ragtime’s Tony-award winning lyricist Lynn Ahrens and composer Stephen Flaherty will re-team for the music, which will include songs from the Rocky films, among them “Eye of the Tiger,” “Gonna Fly Now” and “Take You Back.”

Call me crazy, but I think they should’ve gotten Sting.

Budgeted at $15 million, Rocky: The Musical will have its world debut, in German, in Hamburg November 2012. Stallone plans to then take the musical on the road to stages worldwide. [THR]

15 million?!? I must have drastically underestimated the cost of jump ropes and hooded sweatshirts. Anyway, you probably can’t see it through the boxing gloves, but I’m jazz-handsing pretty hard right now.

A while back, Dreamworks teamed up with a company called Global Creatures to produce a $20 million theatrical version of How to Train Your Dragon which is premiering this March. They recently invited press in for a preview, and holy crap this looks awesome. I’m generally against adapting movies into plays, since it’s kind of the least creative thing ever (what if we took Hairspray and Legally Blonde, subtracted the satire, and added gay songs and horrible cheesy theater smiles!). But you know what’ll always change my mind?  Giant, fire-breathing dragon puppets. Now that’s what I call theater! My God, I’d never have been so down on theater if I knew it could be so much like Truckosaurus.

And that dragon. He’s so soulful and expressive. I wonder if that’s Andy Serkis in there. I bet it is. He’s such an amazing actor.

[via AVClub]

Last year, HBO ran a documentary called Magic and Bird: A Courtship of Rivals (I think they meant “courtship” as a basketball pun, not to imply that the two were dating, but I’m honestly not sure which would be gayer).  Someone in the theater community apparently saw this and thought, “Hey, Magic had AIDS, maybe this could be a play!”  You can never have too many AIDS musicals, I always say.

A play about the relationship between basketball Hall of Fame members Magic Johnson and Larry Bird is being created for Broadway.
“Magic/Bird” is being developed by the producers and writer of the current Broadway show “Lombardi,” and is scheduled to debut in 2012, according to a news release.
The play “chronicles the intertwined life stories” of the two men, according to the release. It is being produced by Fran Kirmser and Tony Ponturo and written by Eric Simonson, who held the same roles in the making of “Lombardi.”
“Lombardi,” a one-act drama that opened in 2010 about the life of Hall of Fame football coach Vince Lombardi, is the only new play from the first half of the 2010-11 Broadway season that’s still running.
With the National Football League also credited as a “Lombardi” producer, it was staged with an investment of just over $3 million. Ponturo and Kirmser met on the producing team of the 2009 revival of the musical “Hair.” “Magic/Bird” is being produced in association with the NBA as well as Johnson, 51, and Bird, 54. [Bloomberg via Drew]

I’m gonna go ahead and guess that a Broadway show about Magic Johnson and Larry Bird might look a liiiiittle something like this:

I hear five minutes after they put out a casting call, Nic Cage burst in the door wearing a leather trenchcoat.  “Did somebody say something about magic birds?”

Relax, relax, Scarfield is fine. The actor in question was working on Julie Taymor’s $65 million Spider-Man play.  A 65-million-dollar play, mother of God.  It’s like a steam engine made of unobtainium.

The latest and most painful disaster involves actor Kevin Aubin, who broke both his wrists while demonstrating a botched flying stunt for a small audience last week. Aubin is okay, if in casts. He wrote on Facebook, “well i dont know what im allowed to say. but something went wrong and i fell on my hands from a high distance. It happens, no one to blame. I’m alive and ok.” On the brighter side, the show sounds pretty amazing: Aubin hurt himself while being catapulted, as if by a slingshot, across the stage. According to someone who has seen it, “They are not just flying people around — they’re catapulting them! It’s like they’re being shot out of rubber bands … There are going to be Spider-Men flying all over the theater — right over your head — during the show.” [Vulture]

He broke the wrists in “a fall?”  Uh-huh, riiight.  Sure, buddy, whatever you say.  Look, as soon as I heard U2 was writing songs for a musical about Spider-Man, I knew dismissive-wank-related accidents would be inevitable. Don’t piss on my shoes and tell me it’s flooding.

IN THE NAAAAAAAAAME OF WEBS! FLYING HIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIGH ON MY SPIDER WEBS……

13-year-old Little Miss Sunshine star Abigail Breslin is set to play Helen Keller on Broadway next year.  She’ll star in the revival of William Gibson’s play The Miracle Worker, a title sure to sound ironic to its subject if she were indeed able to recognize sounds.

“I am so honored,” the 13-year-old Breslin said in an interview. “It’s like the biggest thing in the world. … I have read the biography of Helen Keller. So I’ve always known the story, and it’s always been something I wanted to play.

“The Miracle Worker” was about three women — Helen, Annie Sullivan, the determined instructor who teaches the deaf and blind Helen how to communicate, and Helen’s mother (a role still be to cast), a woman who insisted against her husband’s advice of reaching out to this young teacher for her daughter. [THR]

Meanwhile, FilmDrunk was able to obtain an exclusive transcript of Breslin’s first big song and dance number in the show:

Unnng unnng gunnghh ungggh guuuuuun-guuungggh
Nunununggghhh gunngg inger ung gerrrrrr
Mmmmphh mmmphhh ingleunngh urrrr
Mmmmphh mmmphhh ingleunngh urrrr
Mmmmphh mmmphhh ingleunngh urrrrrrrr eeeeeee ungunghhhh unngghh unnnghhh errrrrrr

Innk nnninnnk unngh slurp
Nnninnngg innnk ninngggh numm nerrrr
gmphurph urmph inklmmmumm muuurph
phurph phurph urmph urmph gerrrrrr
Mmmmphh mmmphhh ingleunngh urrrr
Mmmmphh mmmphhh ingleunngh urrrr
Mmmmphh mmmphhh ingleunngh urrrr urmphh errrff nerrrff inghlemmm nurph

Paaaarrrmmph aaaaaruuummph aaaarrrrr gim spluuuuurgh
Spluuuurgh aaaarrruuumph phurph unk huurrrr
Mmmmphh mmmphhh ingleunngh urrrr
Mmmmphh mmmphhh ingleunngh urrrr
Mmmmphh mmmphhh ingleunngh urrrrrrrr eeeeeee ungunghhhh unngghh unnnghhh errrrrrr

Unnng unnng gunnghh ungggh guuuuuun-guuungggh
Nunununggghhh gunngg inger ung gerrrrrr
Mmmmphh mmmphhh ingleunngh urrrr
Mmmmphh mmmphhh ingleunngh urrrr
Mmmmphh mmmphhh ingleunngh urrrrrrrr eeeeeee ungunghhhh unngghh unnnghhh errrrrrr

(Mmmmphh mmmphhh ingleunngh urrrr
Mmmmphh mmmphhh ingleunngh urrrr
Mmmmphh mmmphhh ingleunngh urrrrrrrr eeeeeee ungunghhhh unngghh unnnghhh errrrrrr)

[*Coda]

Mmmmphh mmmphhh ingleunngh urrrr
Mmmmphh mmmphhh ingleunngh urrrr
Mmmmphh mmmphhh ingleunngh urrrrrrrr eeeeeee ungunghhhh unngghh unnnghhh errrrrrr

[Key change]

Mmmmphh mmmphhh ingleunngh urrrr
Mmmmphh mmmphhh ingleunngh urrrr
Mmmmphh mmmphhh ingleunngh urrrrrrrr eeeeeee ungunghhhh unngghh unnnghhh errrrrrr

[Repeat till fade out]

We complain a lot about how movies are all remakes and stunt casting and undisguised toy commercials, but all it takes is the occasional news out of Broadway to remind us that it could be worse.  That crappy movie you wasted $12 on will probably spawn a crappy play with singing and dancing and Bob Saget playing the lead for one week only and no special effects.  On that note, 83-year-old Jerry Lewis is set to make his theater directing debut on a musical version of his 1963 film The Nutty Professor.

With music by Academy Award, Emmy Award, Grammy Award and Pulitzer Prize winner Marvin Hamlisch and a book and lyrics by multiple Tony Award winner and Grammy nominee Rupert Holmes, the musical is aiming for a bow on Broadway in the 2010-11 season.

Lewis stated, “I was born with show business in my blood and working on Broadway gets it coursing through my veins like no other place can. Marvin and Rupert have given one of my favorite and most enduring films…a hilarious and gorgeous adaptation for Broadway and I could not be happier. Does this story sing and dance? You bet it does.” [Playbill]

It sings, it dances, it falls asleep on the couch and complains about the Orientals.  I’m a-tellin ya, Bimbo, this heah hootenanny is the elephant’s eyebrows.  Hold on… Cholly, I can’t hear a word this dame’s a-singin.  Can someone replace the hydro tubes on her amplification box?

Will Ferrell’s Broadway show about Bush (You’re Welcome, America: A Final Night with George W. Bush) opened last night. The consensus seems to be that it was funny, but meh.  Said NY Times, “I laughed, I yawned.” USA Today hated it, but their reviewer seems like kind of a cunt (with all due respect).

Ferrell’s monologue is a mixture of fact and fiction. While it is true that 71 percent of Americans disapproved of Bush’s job performance at the end of his term, Bush did not shoot up sleeping hobos with Novocain as a child. It is also unlikely that Bush has read Danielle Steel’s “Rogue” over 200 times. [NYC Theater]

[At one point] Ferrell, asks theatergoers to tell him their occupations, so he can give them the gift of his own pet names.
“Occupational therapist,” called out one woman at the performance I attended. “Helen Keller,” answered Mr. Ferrell as Mr. Bush, without pausing to think. “Bike messenger,” said another person. “I’ll call you Lance Armstrong,” responded Mr. Ferrell. But the coup de grâce came when a voice (not mine) yelled, “Reviewer,” and the man onstage answered, with the impact of a thrusting sword, “Obsolete profession.” [NYTimes]

Whoa, easy there, captain penis metaphor.  Anyway, that’s what you would’ve seen if you lived in Manhattan and had $61-$301 to spend.  All in all, not nearly as successful as the time Judy Dench crushed a ping pong ball with her anus.  She’s an amazing lady.

Randy Quaid was banned from the Actor’s Equity union for life and fined $81,572 for basically keeping it too real on the set of Lone Star Love the Musical.

* Quaid hit an actor on the back of the head four times during performances. When the stage manager told him to stop, he smacked the actor again.
* Another actor was warned that if he made direct eye contact with Quaid onstage, he’d be fired.
* Quaid made "sexually inappropriate" comments onstage, repeatedly referring to an actress’ musical instruments as her "gynecological instruments." [I bet they'd have complained when I offered customers a "sanitary napkin" back at the deli too - jeez, it's just an adjective. -Ed.]
* The couple [Quaid and his wife, presumably - Ed.] tried to rewrite the script, to eliminate characters. Randy "felt free" to change blocking, lyrics and lines during performances, and repeatedly failed to show up for note sessions and rehearsals

But wait, theres more!

Quaid says the actors are part of a “pinko-commie organization” trying to destroy him. And it gets even better: Sources tell TMZ that Quaid’s wife Evi turned up at the Equity hearing for Quaid and “berated several Equity staff members, including a 76-year-old receptionist whom she allegedly kicked in the shins, drawing blood.” Evi says Equity staffers broke her finger while trying to bar her from the meeting; others say she was a screaming lunatic raving about a “Nazi plot” against her husband. [Gothamist]

Sources call the scandal, "The only interesting thing to happen to musical theater ever." 

Why do we still have the theater?  Don’t they know you can go film shit on location and do special effects and stuff and then play it back without the actors having to be there?  Theater nowadays is pretty much like when rich people go camping.  "Ooh, let’s drive out to the woods and pretend we’re poor!"  Good idea, dad, you fucking yuppie.   

[Thanks to RoboPanda, the most pleasant smelling FilmDrunkard, for the tip.]