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<em>Scrubs</em> Is Being Turned Into A Broadway Musical For Some Reason
By
Ben Yakas
Published Feb 14, 2014
Modified Feb 14, 2014
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By
Ben Yakas
Published Feb 14, 2014
Modified Feb 14, 2014
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Plenty of musicals have been turned into movies, and plenty of movies have been turned into musicals. But a TV show being turned into a musical? Now you're blowing my mind man. But according to creator Bill Lawrence, that's just what he has in store for his now-retired sitcom, Scrubs. If any TV show can pull it off, it's probably the one which had one of their best episodes done in the style of a musical, climaxing with "Guy Love."
Of course, considering that they already pulled off a musical episode in 2007, and the fact the show has been off the air since 2010 (counting one ill-advised sort-of spinoff season), it seems odd that Lawrence is doing this now. But you can thank the British for this one: "Randall Winston, who’s part of my company here and produced Scrubs, was talking to a British theater group, and it turns out Scrubs is very, very big in the U.K.," Lawrence explained to EW.
He went into more details with EW:
Where does it stand now?
We’re negotiating with different theater groups who will hopefully put up the money for a year to pay the composers to develop [spec songs]. Disney has nicely become a silent partner in giving the rights for us to go shop it. And the most fun thing for a theater junkie is we’ve already reached the stage that various composers have been submitting songs based on an outline that we put together for the type of stuff we would do.
What’s in that outline? Do you know what story you want to tell?
We have an outline basically showing where we’re looking for songs, how we would intend to do fantasies, how we would use that a cappella band as a Greek chorus that would be on stage singing the theme when people come in. When that outline goes out to composers, they’ll know the tone because they’ve seen the show and some of the musical stuff we’ve done. If I did Scrubs, I would do it as the Legally Blonde or Wicked model. It’s all the same characters. The outline is kind of a mishmash of the pilot episode mushed together with the episode where Mrs. Landingham from The West Wing dies. We’re combining two of our best stories with what we’re allowed to cull and choose from our best comedic moments and fantasies from nine years of the show.
We never realized there was such a passionate audience out there for Scrubs, which was always a pretty solid show (check out The AV Club's reviews if you doubt it) but has never been considered a classic (nor was it ever a ratings bonanza). But in this age of resurrected cult shows, anything is possible...except getting Zach Braff to star in the musical, apparently.
"Zach will be involved creatively because he’s a theater lover like me, but part of the fun for us is that we would go with Broadway musical stars," Lawrence said. But there could be at least one cameo from the show: "The only people I could see reprising their roles are Ted’s a cappella band [The Blanks]. The reason that we put them on Scrubs in the first place, besides the fact that they’re funny, is that they are all musical theater guys."
Tagged
broadway
musical
scrubs
tv shows
Ben Yakas
Ben Yakas is a former Gothamist reporter.
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