A 'Nashville' Musical Is Headed To Broadway With An All-New Score
Nashville is coming to Broadway. The country music-themed series, which found second and third lives on CMT and Hulu after cancellation on ABC, has found a fourth live on the Great White Way, with a Nashville musical adaptation in the works from Broadway producer Scott Delman.
Delman, the president of Blue Spruce Productions and producer of Tony Award-winning fare like Book of Mormon, Hello, Dolly!, Fun Home, Mean Girl, and more, acquired the theatrical rights to Nashvillefrom Lionsgate and ABC Studios, according to Deadline. The respected Broadway producer, whose productions have garnered 10 Tony Awards, will serve as lead producer of the planned Nashville musical. But there's a twist.
The Nashville musical will feature an entirely original story with entirely original music "written by major Nashville and Broadway songwriters," Delman said in a statement. The Broadway musical will apparently scrap the characters and story told across six seasons on ABC, CMT, and Hulu. Delman said the show would "deliver Broadway's first score of true contemporary country music – a genre that has exploded with mainstream audiences in recent years. Lionsgate has a treasure-trove of sterling IP, and I'm honored to be a part of this new phase of their live entertainment division." He added:
"Nashville, with its complex, relatable characters and sweeping emotional gestures, has all of the narrative elements that I look for in great theatrical source material. From that rich DNA, we will be building an original story with entirely original music, written by major Nashville and Broadway songwriters."
The original series premiered on ABC in 2012 and starred Connie Britton as Rayna Jaymes, a legendary country music superstar whose stardom begins to fade, and Hayden Panettiere as rising younger star Juliette Barnes. After Britton left the show in season 5, the series expanded to chronicle the lives of various other fictitious country music singers and their intersecting careers and lives in Nashville, Tennessee.
The series offers a pretty basic premise ripe for a fresh Broadway musical adaptation. Fans of the series may be upset not to see Rayna and Juliette's stories brought to the Broadway stage, but it seems that Delman and his team want to create an entirely new story and set of characters. That makes sense as the show hasn't developed quite the following of other TV and movie adaptations, despite the show's long run across various networks.
More details on production dates and the creative team for the Nashville musical will be announced later.