With Hamilton on Disney + being a runaway feeling, Hollywood reporter He has learned that the streaming service is working to bring another Broadway musical to the screen.
Playwright Jocelyn Bioh and director Wanuri Kahiu are developing Once on this island, an adaptation of the 1990 Broadway musical based on the novel Rosa Guy, My love my Love; or, The peasant.
Marc Platt, the producer behind Broadway Evil as well as movies ranging from Legally Blonde to La La Land, is producing.
opposite to Hamilton, which was a recording of a performance on stage, Island will be a more traditional adaptation. Disney’s live-action division is the key point of the project.
The story unfolds in the French West Indies in the Caribbean Sea and tells the story of a peasant girl who falls in love with an aristocrat. In this context, social class differences unfold as the island gods bet on what is stronger, love or death.
The one-act musical only lasted a year, but it quickly developed an ardent following that continues to fan its flames today. A production in London’s West End in the mid-1990s garnered the Olivier Award for Best New Musical, while a Broadway revival in 2017 garnered several Tony Award nominations and a victory for Best Musical Renaissance. Lynn Ahrens wrote the lyrics and the book while Stephen Flaherty composed the music.
Bioh is an accomplished playwright known outside of Broadway School girls; OR, The Bad Girls African Game, as much as Nollywood dreams. Her original musical goddess is on the way to receiving its world premiere at Berkeley Rep in the spring of 2021, followed by a Broadway career. Bioh also recently co-founded the Black Women on Broadway digital platform, alongside Amber Iman and Danielle Brooks, and served as a writer and co-producer on the upcoming HBO Max limited series. Americanah, starring Lupita Nyong’o. She previously wrote for the Spike Lee Netflix series She has to have it and the Netflix show Russian doll.
Kahiu is the Kenyan filmmaker who wrote and directed the LGBTQ movie Rafiki, which made history in 2018 as the first Kenyan film to be screened at the Cannes Film Festival, even when the film was banned in its home country due to its themes. Other credits include the African films From a Whisper and Pumzi. The filmmaker, co-founder of the African art collective Afrobubblegum, is developing an adaptation of the novel YA The thing about jellyfish which has Millie Bobby Brown attached to the star and is set to Universal.
Bioh is represented by UTA and attorney Nina Shaw. Kahiu is represented by CAA and Gotham Group.
This article originally appeared on THR.com.
