New Line Cinema’s hit motion picture comedy “The Wedding Singer” will be relaunched as a Broadway play for the ’05-’06 season, it was announced today by Robert Shaye and Michael Lynne, Co-Chairmen and Co-Chief Executive Officers of New Line Cinema.
Released in 1998, the acclaimed hit starred Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore as a down-on-his-luck wedding singer and the waitress he falls in love with, who is already engaged to marry someone else. The book for the stage production will be adapted from Tim Herlihy’s feature screenplay by Chad Beguelin and Tim Herlihy. The score will be composed by Matt Sklar with lyrics by Chad Beguelin, the award-winning team behind “Wicked City” and upcoming stage adaptations of “Get Shorty” and Disney’s “Aladdin.”
“The Wedding Singer” will be produced by Margo Lion, whose last collaboration with the studio is the multiple Tony Award-winning production of John Waters’ “Hairspray,” along with New Line Theatricals. Mark Kaufman, New Line Cinema’s Senior Vice President of Music and Theatre, will oversee the project for the studio.
“Like ‘Hairspray,’ ‘The Wedding Singer’ is a natural for the stage,” said Lynne. “We’re tremendously excited to have so many talented people involved in the project.”
“It’s exciting to be part of the team that’s going to bring this story to life on stage,” Tim Herlihy said. “I feel that with Chad, Matt, Margo and Mark, we have a chance to do something special.”
In addition to “The Wedding Singer,” Herlihy has written or co-written the films “Billy Madison,” “Happy Gilmore,” “The Waterboy,” “Big Daddy,” and “Mr. Deeds.” He was formerly head writer of the groundbreaking television series “Saturday Night Live.”
Lion’s productions have garnered 19 Tony Awards, 29 Drama Desk Awards, six Obie Awards and one Pulitzer Prize. Her Broadway producing credits include “Hairspray,” “The Crucible,” “Elaine Stritch at Liberty” and “Angels in America: Millennium Approaches,” among others. Off-Broadway, she has produced such productions as “Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune,” “The Garden of Earthly Delights” and George C. Wolfe’s “Harlem Song” at the Apollo Theatre. Ms. Lion is an adjunct professor at the NYU-Tisch School of the Arts.
Sklar and Beguelin collaborated on the American Stage Company production of “Wicked City” and are currently working on musical versions of the film “Get Shorty.” Beguelin recently penned the book for the stage version of Disney’s “Aladdin.” The lauded team recently received the Gilman and Gonzalez-Falla Musical Theater Award, as well as the Jonathan Larson Award and the Edward Kleban Award for best lyricist.
