According to one critic quoted in the previews, Magic Mike is “the Citizen Kane of stripper movies,” and with the most Important Film of Our Times set to open in less than a week, my browser tabs are currently running about 90 to 95 percent C-Tates stories. Would you believe one Florida whigger’s story of pantsless rags to shirtless riches is set to become a stage musical? Hey, if Twilight porn can be literature, surely dudes helicoptering their wangs to the beat of “Macho Man” can be theatre. Yeah, that’s right, I spelled it the English way. ‘Cause I’m classy.

USA Today reports from the premiere:

Tatum’s producing partner Reid Carolin, who wrote the screenplay for Magic Mike, said they have big plans to send the stripper story to Broadway. “We are working on it as a Broadway show, which would be a different story,” said Carolin, “more of a romp, more of a fun night out at a club with a story. I’m almost more excited about that than the movie because I think it’s the perfect thing for women to go see on Broadway, to be participants in the show.” Pettyfer said he would “absolutely” do the Broadway show. In fact, “I think we should all do the opening night,” he said.

Hmm, I don’t know if they’re going to be able to sell beefcakes in banana hammocks singing songs about their hopes and dreams to the musical theater audience. Frankly it sounds a little gay.

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Here’s a video that’s exactly what it sounds like, and clever mainly in the sense that I’m surprised no one had thought of it sooner. It’s Pulp Fiction translated into Shakespearian Fancy Talk, and it’s pretty hard not to like.

The play premiered at the 2009 Minnesota Fringe Festival but the clip below is from a performance at the 2011 Hollywood Fringe Festival. (If you happen to be in the Santa Monica area and this seems up your alley, there’s still time to catch a performance.) [Reddit via AV Club]

Here’s the part where Vincent Vega explains to Jules the Royale with Cheese.

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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.”

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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.

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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?”