‘Almost Famous’ Musical Heading To Broadway In 2022
The film’s director Cameron Crowe has been penning the music with Tom Kitt, renowned for his work on Green Day‘s ‘American Idiot’ musical.
The musical adaptation of Cameron Crowe’s seminal rock film Almost Famous is headed to Broadway in 2022.
The filmmaker announced back in 2018 that he had started work on adapting the movie into a musical. He revealed that he was penning the music with Tom Kitt, who is known for his work on Green Day‘s American Idiot musical.
Crowe teased fans at the time by posting a short video on Twitter where the camera pans from Kitt playing the piano to a production board filled with post-it notes laying out the different scenes, including ‘Stillwater sound check’.
The show’s Twitter profile has now updated its bio to read: “It’s all happening…Broadway 2022 #AlmostFamous.”
Upon its release more than two decades ago, Almost Famous earned many awards and nominations, including four Oscar nods, a Grammy Award for Best Compilations Soundtrack Album for a Motion Picture, Television, or Other Media and two Golden Globes for Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy and a Best Supporting Actress win for Kate Hudson.
Other names who star in the film include Billy Crudup, Patrick Fugit, Frances McDormand, Jason Lee, Zoey Zeschanel, Anna Paquin, and Philip Seymour Hoffman.
The film’s soundtrack was reissued last year as a mammoth boxset made up of 102 tracks, with various configurations available.
Unreleased songs on the reissue include a cast rendition of Elton John‘s “Tiny Dancer”, and a remix and edit of The Who’s “Amazing Journey / Sparks” as arranged by director Cameron Crowe. Nancy Wilson’s original score was also featured, along with 14 outtakes.
Almost Famous is semi-autobiographical, as Cameron Crowe himself was a teenage writer for Rolling Stone. It is based on his experiences touring with rock bands Poco, the Allman Brothers Band, Led Zeppelin, Eagles, and Lynyrd Skynyrd. Crowe has discussed how during this period he fell in love, and met his musical heroes—these events represented in the film as happening to William Miller (played by Patrick Fugit), the boyish main character.
The film was initially released in 2000. Two decades later, the Oscar/BAFTA/Golden Globe Award-winning film remains one of the sweetest love letters to the genre, one that deftly captured the look, the sound, the feel, the attitude of what rock ‘n’ roll meant to its creators, its most fervent adherents, its hangers-on and its worried parents during a golden era of pop music.
