An elephant never forgets, but Broadway’s memory is apparently somewhat shorter. Despite the fact that few movie-to-musical adaptations find success on The Great White Way, Water For Elephants will be the latest property to get a musical adaptation, according to Variety. This time around, however, producers have acquired the rights to the 2006 novel by Sara Gruen rather than the bland 2011 movie starring Reese Witherspoon and Robert Pattinson. And hey, Broadway actually has a pretty good track record of turning books into musicals, as seen in mega-hit adaptations like Wicked, Les Mis, and The Phantom Of The Opera.
The musical adaptation of Gruen’s novel, which centers on a love triangle set against the backdrop of a 1930s circus, is still very early in the process. A producing team is in place, helmed by former Walt Disney Studios chairman Peter Schneider and producer Elisabetta di Mambro, but no creative team, cast, or timeline has been announced yet. Before they bring Water For Elephants to the stage, of course, they might want to consider the mistakes of Big Fish and Side Show, two other circus-themed musicals whose recent Broadway runs flopped. They might also want to consider that elephants are really big.