A stage production of Disney's Aladdin is coming to Broadway's New Amsterdam Theatre in 2014. It will also preview in Toronto this November.
The stage version of Aladdin will be "a full-length, big song musical with big dance numbers," the president of Disney Theatrical Productions, Thomas Schumacher, told the Associated Press.
"If I look around Broadway right now, what I want to see is big production numbers. I want to see lush environments. I want surprise," Schumacher told the AP. "You want a lot of humor, which we will do. And you want heart."
Aladdin has been staged as a musical before, but never on such a large scale. The Broadway show "will be an entirely new production featuring a new script, tunestack and a wholly original design scaled to the Broadway stage," according to a Disney press release.
But die-hard Disney purists fear not: all five original songs from the classic Academy Award-winning 1992 animated film, including "A Whole New World" and "Friend Like Me," will be featured in the live show. Casting, show dates and ticket information "will be released at a later date," Disney says.
Disney has developed Broadway versions of several of its animated films. Their first Broadway production, Beauty and the Beast, ran for 13 years and has been produced in 28 countries, according to a press release.
The stage production of The Lion King continues to draw big audiences in its sixteenth year. Productions of Tarzan and The Little Mermaid, while somewhat less successful in the U.S., continue to thrive in Germany, Holland, Russia, and Japan.
The original film version of Aladdin was released in 1992 and grossed over $500 million.
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