Miramax Goes to Bat with ‘Damn Yankees’ Remake
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Whatever Harvey wants, Harvey gets. And right now, Miramax Films co-chairman Harvey Weinstein wants to hit another one out of the park with a musical.
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Basking in the razzle-dazzle success of “Chicago,” Miramax’s highest-grossing film ever, the studio has bought rights for the remake of another Broadway song-and-dance favorite, the baseball fable “Damn Yankees,” the studio said on Tuesday.
And the Walt Disney Co.-owned distributor still has a deal in the works to develop an updated film version of the stage musical “Guys and Dolls,” a studio source said.
The “Chicago” producing team of Craig Zadan and Neil Meron is on board for both projects, with Miramax planning to go to bat with “Damn Yankees” first, the studio said.
The Tony Award-winning musical, which opened on Broadway in 1955, centers on a fan who sells his soul to help his hapless team, the Washington Senators, win the American League pennant from the unbeatable Yankees.
Actor Ray Walston won a Tony for his performance as Mr. Applegate, the devil, and actress-dancer Gwen Verdon won the Tony as the seductress Lola (“Whatever Lola Wants, Lola Gets”), roles both performers re-created in the 1958 Warner Bros. film adaptation that co-starred Tab Hunter.
The show features music and lyrics by Richard Adler and Jerry Ross and a book by George Abbott and Douglass Wallop, based on Wallop’s novel “The Year the Yankees Lost the Pennant.” The original production was choreographed by the late Bob Fosse, who also arranged the dancing for “Chicago.”
A 1994 stage revival of “Yankees,” choreographed by Rob Marshall, the Oscar-nominated director of “Chicago,” starred Bebe Neuwirth and Victor Garber (later replaced by Jerry Lewis).
“I see us updating ‘Damn Yankees,’ modernizing it, and really having fun with the role of the devil,” Weinstein said in a statement. No decisions about casting for the Miramax remake have been made.
Meanwhile, Miramax is pursuing a deal to bring the stage musical “Guys and Doll” back to the big screen. Featuring such numbers as “Luck Be a Lady” and “Sit Down, You’re Rocking the Boat,” the Frank Loesser musical centers on the unlikely romance between a high-stakes gambler and a female missionary.
The show had a highly successful Broadway run in the 1950s and was made into a movie in 1955 starring Marlon Brando, Frank Sinatra and Jean Simmons.
Miramax’s newfound interest in musicals follows on the heels of the studio’s success with its big-screen adaptation of “Chicago,” which starred Renee Zellweger and Catherine Zeta-Jones as a pair of homicidal show girls.
Based on a stage production that debuted on Broadway in the 1970s, “Chicago” generated nearly $169 million in U.S. ticket sales alone, marking the biggest box-office success for Miramax to date, and won the Oscar as best picture.
The DVD release of the film is set for August, including an extra song-and-dance number cut from the original movie, but Miramax has decided against a renewed theatrical run as previously contemplated, the source said.
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