In honor of the Tonys, airing Sunday, June 10, on CBS, Live with Regis and Kelly will showcase a slew of Broadway babies next week. Monday brings a Spring Awakening; Tuesday finds David Hyde Pierce hawking Curtains; on Wednesday, Raúl Esparza makes for great Company; Thursday Christine Ebersole brightens Grey Gardens; and on Friday Mary Poppins goes "Supercalifragilisticexpidalidocious".... Cheers star Rhea Perlman makes her West End debut in Boeing-Boeing this summer, as per Playbill.com.... Broadway.com reports that the American classic Gone with the Wind is being turned into a British musical, set to hit the stage in spring 2008.... An actor in the problem-plagued production of London's Lord of the Rings was injured by a piece of hydraulic stage machinery. He was treated with medicine, not magic. Reporting by Raven Snook
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Question: I was reading your answer about the play that was based on Dr. Strangelove and that got me to wondering if you know of any other really weird or unlikely movie-to-stage adaptations coming up. Thanks.
Answer: The avant-garde off-off-Broadway theater piece Major Bang, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Dirty Bomb, freely adapted from Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964), was indeed an odd one. But I have to say, it's at least matched and maybe topped by Grey Gardens, a musical adaptation of the 1975 documentary by Albert Maysles and his brother about an eccentric mother and daughter, both named Edith Bouvier Beale, who lived in abject squalor in a rambling East Hampton mansion. The women, known to friends as "Big Edie" and "Little Edie," were related to Jacqueline B
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Per Variety, Drew Barrymore and Jessica Lange will star in Grey Gardens, a fact-based drama about two eccentric relatives of Jacqueline Kennedy.... MTV Films and Paramount are developing Midway Games' The Wheelman into a feature starring Vin Diesel.... Per the Hollywood Reporter, Jonathan Liebesman, the director of the upcoming Texas Chainsaw Massacre prequel, is in talks to helm New Line's remake of the original Friday the 13th, which — and I can't say I agree with this — will heavily feature Jason, and in his hockey mask no less. Hmmm, maybe those Daniel Craigophobes have the right idea....
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