Jennifer Lopez Teams With Skydance To "Reimagine" Classic Musicals For Modern Audiences

Jennifer Lopez is already an icon who has made an indelible mark in the fields of music and movies, but now she's set to combine those two passions. Lopez has signed a deal with Skydance Entertainment and a company called Concord to develop film and television adaptations of some of the world's biggest musicals, including shows from Rogers and Hammerstein and Andrew Lloyd Webber. And yes, she also has an option to star in at least one of these forthcoming adaptations.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, the deal with Skydance, Lopez, and Elaine Goldsmith-Thomas' Nuyorican Productions fleshes out a preexisting deal made with Concord that includes the first-ever TV adaptation of Oklahoma!. The project is already being written by John Lee Hancock and Bekah Brunstetter and will be set in the present day.

Concord's library is gargantuan, comprising musicals from Rogers and Hammerstein like Cinderella, South Pacific, The Sound of Music (which could be unfortunately relevant today, given the whole "Nazi" component), The King & I, State Fair, Show Boat, Carousel, Some Enchanted Evening, Flower Drum Song, Pipe Dream, and A Connecticut Yankee, among others. Several of Andrew Lloyd Webber's shows are under their control as well, including Cats (good luck resurrecting that one after the 2019 movie disaster), Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Jesus Christ Superstar, The Phantom of the Opera, its sequel Love Never Dies, Evita, Sunset Boulevard, Starlight Express, The Woman in White, Whistle Down the Wind, Aspects of Love, By Jeeves, School of Rock, Song and Dance, and Horatio Snozzblower's Big Night. (OK, fine, I made up that last one.)

They also have the rights to other classics like The Wizard of Oz, On the Town, 42nd Street, Hello, Dolly!, A Chorus Line, Bye Bye Birdie, Meet Me in St. Louis, and An American in Paris, so there are plenty of options for Lopez to choose from. Lin-Manuel Miranda's In the Heights also falls under their purview, although considering that was just adapted into a movie for Warner Bros., it seems unlikely that we'll be getting a new version any time soon. (Hamilton is owned by Disney, so don't expect to see JLo as Angelica Schuyler, either.)

"Musicals were a part of the tapestry of my childhood," Lopez said in a statement. "We're so excited to begin our association with Skydance and Concord in reinterpreting some of the most classic musicals and bringing them to life in new ways for a new generation." Exactly what creative choices they plan to make in order to modernize these stories remains to be seen.