Christmas has come early, with the recent announcement that the musical adaptation of holiday classic A Christmas Story will be coming to Fox this December.
If you’ve never seen the movie—first of all, fix that immediately, and don’t just wait until Christmas day to catch the 24-hour marathon on TBS or TNT—you’re probably still familiar with the plot. Leg lamps, fuzzy pink bunny costumes, BB guns, and tongues on a flag pole have become synonymous with tinsel, twinkling lights, reindeer, and mistletoe, thirty plus years since the movie originally premiered. We all know the story of the young Midwestern boy who wants nothing more than an official Red Ryder, carbine action, two-hundred shot range model air rifle for Christmas, only to be told over and over (say it with me, everybody), “You’ll shoot your eye out!”
The musical adaptation of the movie opened on Broadway in 2012 to moderate success, earning three Tony nominations, including Best Musical, Best Original Score, and Best Book of a Musical.
Marc Platt, following the success of his previous collaboration with Fox on Grease: Live will executive produce, along with Adam Siegel. Jonathan Tolins and Robert Cary will serve as co-executive producers and writers. Rounding out the creative team, Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, who scored the Broadway musical, will also compose new songs for the live television adaptation. The pair recently became Tony nominees for the current musical Dear Evan Hansen and were the lyricists of the Academy Award-winning song “City of Stars” from La La Land.
David Madden, president of entertainment for Fox Broadcasting Company, had this to say of the upcoming television event: “A Christmas Story is one of the most beloved holiday films of all time—audiences have made a yearly ritual of re-watching it—and we are thrilled to have Marc leading the charge in bringing the musical version of that film to television.”
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