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A movie adaptation of the Tony Award-winning musical Spring Awakening is still in the works, BroadwayWorld can exclusively reveal.
After the Duncan Sheik-Steven Sater musical opened on Broadway in December 2006, it wasn’t long before there was talk of a film version taking shape — but it keeps getting put on hold.
“We have worked on it so much,” Sater, who wrote the musical’s book and lyrics, exclusively tells BroadwayWorld. “We are so in the trenches with it, and it has fallen apart a few times.”
When asked if the movie will actually come to fruition, Sater says, “I pray it will.”
“We’ve been completely set up, we’ve been financed; it’s fallen apart,” Sater explains. “We have a script that everyone’s very excited about. We have a director that everyone’s excited about. We have producers that we are all involved with.”
However, Sater says that the movie just simply can’t get enough financial backing, especially given that the musical deals with strong adult themes like sexual awakenings, child abuse, suicide and more.
“This movie is perceived as risky,” says Sater. “It’s a period piece, and it has a teen demographic, and yet it’s R-rated because of the lyrics. So there have been one reason after another — there’s been disbelief in our ability to have foreign appeal. So these have been the obstacles we’ve been facing for years and years.”
However, the creative team has “come up with a new financial model for the movie,” he says, and they’re “trying to raise funds for it.”
“I do think the movie will happen, yes,” says Sater, who notes that nothing is official just yet.
“Incredibly experienced and even prestigious people are involved in it, and we have a lot of our creative team together,” says Sater. “We don’t have financing.”
In 2012, BroadwayWorld reported that Charlie’s Angels director McG was at the helm of a Spring Awakening movie. It seems as though McG is no longer tied to the project. However, Call Me By Your Name director Luca Guadagnino said in a 2020 interview with The Playlist that he discussed “the possibility” of collaborating with Sater on Spring Awakening, but nothing formal was ever announced.
There were also some early reports that Tom Hanks’ Playtone was at one point going to produce. Sater and Sheik have given periodic updates throughout the years, with the book writer and lyricist posting to X in 2020 that he hoped it would “finally be moving forward.”
Though the movie adaptation has been continuously stalled, a 2022 HBO documentary titled Spring Awakening: Those You’ve Known chronicled the cast’s 15-year reunion. The creative team will celebrate the 20th anniversary of Spring Awakening with the original Broadway cast recording being released by Decca Broadway on vinyl on October 9.
An Off-Broadway revival of the musical directed by Tony Award winner Danya Taymor with choreography by Celia Rowlson-Hall is scheduled to open this fall.
To pre-order the Spring Awakening vinyl, click here.
