Forty Years in the Making
For Seller, this is not a passing fancy. He has said he read the novel in college and immediately imagined it as a musical, adding that "I have been wanting to do this show for 40 years." He has also told the Tribune that The Princess Bride will be the biggest show he has produced to date, which is saying something coming from the man behind Hamilton.The road to the stage has been a long one. Attempts to adapt the story into a musical date back to 2006, when Goldman teamed up with Light in the Piazza composer Adam Guettel, though the two parted ways in 2007. Reiner later approached various songwriters, and Disney Theatrical Productions announced its own adaptation in 2013 with composer Steven Lutvak. None of those versions made it to an opening night. This one has real momentum: the musical had its first workshop earlier this year, and the next round of work sessions is scheduled for November 9 through December 17, 2026. Casting for the Chicago engagement has not yet been announced.
A Creative Team Fit for Florin
The talent assembled here is remarkable even by Broadway standards. The book is by Tony Award winner Bob Martin, who co-wrote and starred in The Drowsy Chaperone, and Tony nominee Rick Elice, whose credits include Jersey Boys and the swashbuckling stage adventure Peter and the Starcatcher. Music and lyrics come from Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez, the Oscar-winning songwriting team behind Frozen. Robert Lopez, who also co-created Avenue Q and The Book of Mormon, holds the rare distinction of an EGOT. Tony winner Alex Timbers, the director of Moulin Rouge!, will stage the production, and Tony winner Andy Blankenbuehler, whose choreography for Hamilton and In the Heights redefined movement in musical theatre, will choreograph.Seller himself produced Rent, Avenue Q, In the Heights and Hamilton. His shows have collected twenty-two Tony Awards, including four for Best Musical, and he is the only producer to have mounted two Pulitzer Prize-winning musicals. He also pioneered the twenty-dollar ticket lottery with Rent, a practice that has since spread across the industry.
The Movie That Refused to Fade
To understand why this announcement matters so much, you have to understand what The Princess Bride became. Released on September 25, 1987, on a budget of about $16 million, the film earned a modest $30.9 million at the box office. By the standards of a Hollywood blockbuster, it was a shrug. Then something unusual happened. Through VHS rentals, cable reruns, and a generation of parents pressing it on their kids, the movie kept finding new audiences year after year. Over time it became a cult film and gained recognition as one of the greatest films of the 1980s.The numbers eventually caught up with the affection. The film sits on the American Film Institute's list of the 100 greatest film love stories, and in 2016 it was inducted into the National Film Registry as "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant." Its lines have become part of the language. People who have never seen the movie still know to be suspicious of anyone who overuses the word "inconceivable," and a certain Spaniard's introduction has been quoted at weddings, on T-shirts, and in Congress.
Much of the credit belongs to Goldman, who wrote both the 1973 novel and the screenplay, and to a cast that seemed to understand exactly what kind of movie they were making: Cary Elwes and Robin Wright as the lovers Westley and Buttercup, Mandy Patinkin as the vengeful Inigo Montoya, Andre the Giant as the gentle Fezzik, Wallace Shawn as the scheming Vizzini, Chris Sarandon and Christopher Guest as the villains, and Peter Falk and Fred Savage as the grandfather and grandson whose bedside storytime frames the whole adventure. Chicago audiences may enjoy knowing that the sick boy in that framing story is a kid from Chicago. In a sense, the story is coming home.
Why Fans of the Film Should Be Excited
The obvious worry with any beloved film is that a stage version will feel like a cover band. The people involved here suggest the opposite. Bob Martin's The Drowsy Chaperone was built entirely around a narrator sitting in a chair, guiding the audience through a show he adores, interrupting and commenting as it plays out in front of him. That is almost exactly the structure Goldman gave The Princess Bride, with its grandfather reading the "good parts" to a skeptical grandson. Few writers alive are better suited to that device. Rick Elice, meanwhile, turned a pirate origin story into the inventive, low-tech magic of Peter and the Starcatcher, which Alex Timbers co-directed. Between them they have already proved they can put sword fights, ships, and improbable escapes on a stage and make them feel both thrilling and funny.Then there is the music. The film had a memorable Mark Knopfler score but no songs, which means every number in this production will be new. Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez have a track record of writing songs that are instantly catchy while carrying enormous emotional weight, from the anthems of Frozen to the sly comedy of The Book of Mormon. Imagine Inigo's lifelong vow of revenge as a ballad, or a Vizzini patter song built on the word "inconceivable," or Westley and Buttercup finally getting the love duet the movie never gave them. Add Blankenbuehler's choreography to the duel atop the Cliffs of Insanity and Timbers' eye for spectacle to the Fire Swamp and its Rodents of Unusual Size, and the possibilities are genuinely delicious.
Perhaps most exciting of all, Chicago will see the show while it is still being shaped. A pre-Broadway tryout is where a musical finds itself, where songs get added and cut and scenes get rewritten overnight. Audiences at the Nederlander next summer will be part of that process, and some of them will be able to say for years afterward that they saw it first.