Disney Working on a Stage Version of The Princess Bride

You are correct, this is not a screencap from The Princess Bride. No, it’s from another piece of modern source material that parodied a very specific period in European writing and then was converted into a stage musical.

It’s just that no one spontaneously bursts into song in The Princess Bride like they do in Monty Python’s The Holy Grail, but that might very well change.

The Princess Bride has been dipping in and out of the status of “definitely getting a stage production at some point” for the past few years, but the most recent development is pretty encouraging. Disney has entered into a new deal with William Goldman, the author of The Princess Bride in the first place, to craft a stage version of the novel. Says Alan Horn, who shepherded the agreement:

My involvement in The Princess Bride goes back to 1987 and it has always been close to my heart. For all those years and a few more, I’ve been friends with the brilliant Bill Goldman, and to now have a stage production of this film in development at Disney is honestly a dream come true. It couldn’t be in better hands than those of the experienced Disney Theatrical team led by Tom Schumacher.

At this point there’s no deadline, no cast, and not even any word on whether it’ll be a play or a musical. But I know which of the last two I am pulling for. In fact the more I think about it the more I want a complete operetto like The Nightmare Before Christmas where 90% of the story is told in musical numbers, with leitmotifs for all the themes and repeated lines of the story. One way to sing “inconceivable,” a specific tune for “my name is Inigo Montoya, you killed my father, prepare to die,” one familiar tune for kissing, and of course, one for “as you wish.”

Much of the score of a TPB musical was completed in 2007, when the production was halted over “a financial dispute.” Disney maintains that no material from that version of the show will be used.

(via The Hollywood Reporter.)