Is "Newsies" About to Become a Hit?

During the height of the Disney Renaissance, with animated musicals such as The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, and Aladdin breaking box office records and winning awards left and right, Disney decided to go for broke and try to bring back the live-action movie musical.  The result was 1992's Newsies, a song-and-dance tale of New York's newsboy strike of 1899.  The film featured an adorably off-key Christian Bale, a singing Bill Pullman, and more terrible New Yawk accents than any movie before or since has ever had, as you can see from the original trailer:

Anyone hoping that this would mark the return of the live-action movie musical was sorely disappointed, as Newsies crashed and burned at the box office, earning only $2.8 million in its initial release.  My friends and I actually managed to see it twice.  Both times, we were the only people in the theater.

However, a funny thing happened on the way to the discount shelf:  after being released on video and becoming something of a staple on the Disney Channel, Newsies picked up a fan following.  High schools started putting on unofficial versions of the musical, and composer Alan Menken mentioned during a recent interview on The View that songs from Newsies have been met with wild applause at concerts. 

Well, Disney decided it was time to revisit Newsies by giving fans what they've been wanting for years:  an official stage production.  With a re-worked book by Harvey Firestein, just about all of the original score and songs by Alan Menken and Jack Feldman (minus the Razzie-winning Ann Margaret song that I always skip over when I listen to the soundtrack on my iPod), and a leading man with a much better singing voice than Christian Bale's, Newsies opened at NJ's Papermill Playhouse earlier this fall.   

Disney's original plan was to create a nice regional theater edition of Newsies that they could ultimately license out to schools, which is what they successfully did with the stage version of High School Musical.  But with raves from critics and Broadway producers desperate for a new musical in a season so slow that Spiderman: Turn Off The Dark is starting to look like a serious Tony contender, the plans have suddenly changed.

So now, what's happening with this flop movie that no one noticed when it first hit theaters?

Yeah.  That's what's happening.

Playbill confirms that Newsies will open at Broadway's Nederlander Theater on March 15, 2012.  It's currently listed as a limited run through June 10, but it's likely to extend if the tickets sell as well as they did during its run at the Papermill.  It's also up in the air if the show's original leading man, Jeremy Jordan, will reprise his role as Jack Kelly, since he's currently starring in the new musical version of Bonnie & Clyde. 

Regardless, Newsies is finally coming to Broadway.  And it's actually eagerly anticipated - some columnists are even calling it the Tony front runner and the heir to Annie.  But as those of us who sat in an empty theater loving this silly movie in 1992 could have told anyone, we always knew it was awesome.