SMASH is setting its sights on Broadway with an award-winning creative team, it was announced today by Robert Greenblatt, Neil Meron, and Steven Spielberg who will serve as lead producers. The stage musical adaptation, inspired by the fan-favorite NBC series on which they all worked together, is slated for Broadway in the 2024-25 season. The production will be helmed by 5-time Tony-winning director Susan Stroman, with a score by the Tony and Grammy winning duo Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman (Some Like It Hot, Hairspray, Mary Poppins Returns, etc.), who wrote over two dozen songs for the television show, many of which will be used in the musical. They will also be writing additional new material. The book will be co-written by two of Broadway’s most seasoned craftsmen, Tony-nominated Rick Elice (Jersey Boys, Peter and the Starcatcher) and Tony-winner Bob Martin (The Prom, The Drowsy Chaperone). And Smash’s Emmy-winning choreographer, Joshua Bergasse, will reprise his role for the stage adaptation. 101 Productions, Ltd. will serve as General Management.
The critically-acclaimed Smash debuted on NBC in February 2012 and was groundbreaking in its ambitiousness and developed a devoted following, but its popularity has only grown in the following years. The cast performed a charity benefit concert of the songs from “Bombshell” at the Minskoff Theatre in June of 2015 which sold out in fifteen minutes. It was filmed and eventually streamed during the early days of the pandemic in 2019 as a benefit for The Actor’s Fund (Entertainment Community Fund).
Susan Stroman’s work on Broadway is voluminous, including one of the biggest hits of all time, Mel Brooks’ The Producers, for which she won Tony Awards for both direction and choreography. Her other achievements include Tony Awards for choreography for Crazy For You, Show Boat, and Contact. She is represented this year in the West End by the well-received revival of Crazy For You, and on Broadway with New York, New York that has a score by the immortal team of John Kander and Fred Ebb, and Lin-Manuel Miranda.
Neil Meron has collaborated previously with Shaiman and Wittman, first on the motion picture of the musical Hairspray starring John Travolta, and then on the NBC live adaptation starring Harvey Fierstein. Meron is one of the lead producers (with Greenblatt as Co-Producer) of the current Shaiman and Wittman Broadway musical, Some Like It Hot, which opened to raves in December of 2022 at the Shubert Theatre.