imminent disasters

Enough With the Improbable Broadway Musicals Already!

Susan Jane Belton’s Greek Side (2007).

Continuing the recent trend of announced Broadway shows based on batshit insane, hilariously incongruous source material, ambitious producers have today declared intentions to adapt Bret Easton Ellis’s yuppie-serial-killer classic American Psycho to the musical stage. Though no directors, book writers, songwriters, or music publishers have yet signed on, American Psycho: The Musical! will supposedly hit in 2010 and feature original eighties-inspired songs as well as covers of Huey Lewis, Genesis, and Talking Heads tracks mentioned in the novel.

But in a world that already has in-the-works operas based on An Inconvenient Truth and Brokeback Mountain, plus an apparently bad (but still kinda awesome-looking) one inspired by The Fly, and allegedly Broadway-bound shows about Spider-Man and Emmett Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas, how far do producers honestly expect they can stretch the dollars of inane-spectacle-appreciating theater fans? Surely there can’t be that many of us! The only thing as sure as next week’s announcement of Pasolini’s Salò o le 120 giornate di Sodoma: The Musical! is that most of these shows will lose somebody a lot of money. (Admittedly, though, we’re totally going to see all of them.)

’American Psycho’ heads to Broadway [HR]

Enough With the Improbable Broadway Musicals Already!