All Musicals Are Adaptations

♪ Oh my god! I was wrong!
It was Earth All Along! ♪

"So start off on the right foot and select a story that is all prepared for you. The translation of that story to musical form is quite complex enough. Within that frame you will find more than adequate challenge to your originality and enough on which to experiment."

— Alan Jay Lerner, Advice to Young Musical Writers

Many musicals — one could even argue the majority — are adaptations. There are two major reasons for this tendency:

1. Dramaturgy. Many musicals will have separate artists working on each aspect of the text — book, music and lyrics. Some musicals will have more than one person working on each aspect, and then you have the influence of directors, choreographers and producers. It's hard enough to write a good story as it is, so adapting an existing and proven story provides everybody working on the show with a touchstone.
2. Commerciality. Primarily, musical theatre has always been a commercial medium that tries to appeal to as wide an audience as possible. Moreover, as the sheer costs of staging a Broadway or West End musical continue to skyrocket, producers are under increasing pressure to guarantee their shows will be smash hits. Audiences are more likely to come see a musical (or play, or film ...) based on a property with which they are already familiar, so adaptations are a safer bet than original works, though of course they're not sure hits (as proven by the line of unsuccessful musical adaptations of Cyrano de Bergerac stretching back to 1899).

This trope is so common that it is more useful to list exceptions and parodies than straight examples, and it is often said "great musicals are not written, they are re-written". Note, however, that it can be difficult to define what counts as an "adaptation". Whilst many musicals draw their narrative structure directly from the movie, novel, stage play, comic book, short story, ancient Greek myth etc. on which they were based, many other musicals take their inspiration from a variety of unusual sources — a historical figure or event, a painting, a concept — but provide an original narrative. Historically, this is hardly a new phenomenon, as most operas, operettas and ballets are also adaptations. Only here it is not as obvious to lay people thanks to Adaptation Displacement and because many classic operas were adapted from works which were not as well-known in the first place or which have since been entirely forgotten by the general public.

Incidentally, this is why so many musicals are subtitled The Musical!

---

Examples:

Aversions

Theatre

• Anyone Can Whistle
• Anything Goes
• Avenue Q isn't an adaptation, though it is largely a pastiche of Sesame Street.
• Babes In Arms, though the licensed version is a considerably altered adaptation of the original.
• Bandstand
• The Beautiful Game and its rewrite The Boys in the Photograph.
• Blood Brothers
• The Book of Mormon
• Brooklyn
• Bye Bye Birdie
• Caroline, Or Change
• The Cat and the Fiddle
• Chess
• A Chorus Line
• City of Angels is not an adaptation, though its Show Within a Show is a Film Noir adapted from a novel.
• Company (Sondheim) is a borderline example: it was based on a cycle of seven short plays, which however went unproduced.
• Curtains. The Show Within a Show, meanwhile, is an adaptation of Robin Hood set in the Wild West.
• Dear Evan Hansen, though it is Very Loosely Based on a True Story.
• The Desert Song
• The Drowsy Chaperone
• Falsettos
• Finale
• Finian's Rainbow
• Follies
• Gettin' the Band Back Together
• Grease
• Gutenberg! The Musical! is an original show about two writers with more moxie than talent trying to make a musical about Johann Gutenberg based on one sentence from an encyclopedia and some stuff they vaguely remember from school. As far as they are concerned, that means it's historical fiction, which they define as "fiction that's true".
• Hair
• Hallelujah, Baby!
• Hedwig and the Angry Inch
• In the Heights
• In Transit
• Jukebox Musicals with original plots (Mamma Mia!, Across the Universe (2007), Rock of Ages, etc) are not entirely aversions technically, since they re-work pre-existing material into new presentations, but since the term "adaptation" usually refers to plot, not music, these shows may get a bye. It's debatable whether jukebox musicals where the plots are biographies of the musician(s) whose songs are being used (ie, Jersey Boys) count, being they are literally adaptations of the subjects' life story.
• Kiss Me, Kate is an original musical... about the cast of a musical adaptation of Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew.
• Lady in the Dark
• The Last Five Years
• Linie 1, a German musical famous for almost completely taking place in a subway train.
• Milk and Honey
• The Music Man, though it does have something in common with Meredith Willson's memoirs of his childhood, And There I Stood With My Piccolo.
• Next to Normal
• Of Thee I Sing
• On a Clear Day You Can See Forever
• Paint Your Wagon, despite the author's preface (quoted above) to the published libretto advising musical writers against trying to write original stories.
• Passing Strange
• Pippin
• Plain And Fancy
• The Rocky Horror Show: First a musical, then the movie.
• Songs for a New World
• Starlight Express; Andrew Lloyd Webber wanted to adapt The Railway Series but made it original because otherwise wouldn't have had the creative control he wanted.
• Sunday in the Park with George: Not based on a previous film, play, or novel, but on a painting. Well, sort of.
• Tabaluga und Lilli
• Tabaluga und das verschenkte Glück
• 13
• tick, tick... BOOM!, although it is a partly autobiographical work.
• [title of show]
  • Lampshaded in "An Original Musical"
• Urinetown
• ...And everything by Gilbert and Sullivan, except Princess Ida, based on Tennyson's poem "The Princess"; and The Yeomen of the Guard which is based on a much older story.
  • Gilbert and Sullivan also toyed briefly with the idea of a Frankenstein parody. Ah, What Might Have Been…
• Some musicals, such as 1776, The Civil War, Floyd Collins, Pacific Overtures,Titanic (which coincidentally was produced the same year as the film of the same name), Elisabeth and Parade are not based on any literary source, per se, but rather on historical event. Though The Civil War does include a few direct quotes from speeches, etc., what these musicals get from history is their plots and many/most of their characters.
  • The same is somewhat true of Assassins as well, which takes historical figures and events, and mashes them all together into one timeless vacuum... type... thing.
  • Newsies is another example, this time for film.
  • Similarly, biographical musicals, such as Annie Get Your Gun, Evita, Here Lies Love, and I Am Star Trek (Gene Roddenberry).
  • Hamilton falls under a weird middle ground here. While it's inspired by the book Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow, in that Lin-Manuel Miranda got the idea for the show while reading it while on vacation, it's as much an biographical adaptation of Hamilton's life as a direct adaptation of Chernow's biography. Furthermore, the show takes many more liberties with Hamilton's life than a straight biography like Chernow's would, and features themes (such as the importance of legacy) that Chernow's book does not.
  • Come from Away also fits- based on interviews with residents of Gander, Newfoundland, and the people on planes who were diverted there when American airspace was closed after 9/11.
• Rodgers and Hammerstein's Allegro and Me and Juliet were originals. All other musicals they wrote (including movie and TV musicals) were adaptations.
• Zombie Prom is an original musical, which was adapted into a much-abridged film.

Film and Other

• The American Astronaut
• Crazy Ex-Girlfriend for four continuous seasons, albeit genre Deconstruction and Pastiche of different show tunes and pop songs abound.
• Labyrinth, though its story was influenced by Maurice Sendak's Outside Over There.
• La La Land is a Genre Throwback to 50s musicals, but not a direct adaptation of any one story.
• The Lion King is the first Disney musical to avert the trope. It does take some inspiration from Hamlet, but it's not a direct adaptation of the play.
• Similar to Lion King, Moana was heavily inspired by the myth of Maui, but is not a direct adaptation.
• Once is an entirely original story...that then got adapted to Broadway, where it won a Tony.
• Repo! The Genetic Opera is a borderline example — the writer adapted his own stage play, titled The Necromerchant's Debt into a musical.
• Rockford's Rock Opera
• Singin' in the Rain, although it was written to utilize a bunch of existing songs the studio already owned, is actually a double aversion: a movie musical that is neither based on an existing story or adapted from a Broadway musical. What's largely forgotten is that this was actually common practice for film musicals of the era, and had been for a good ten years; this is simply the most famous example.
• Most of the works of Team StarKid are played with examples, in that they're unlicensed parodies (so far they've adapted Harry Potter, Batman, Aladdin, Star Wars, and The Oregon Trail in such manner) rather than direct adaptations. During this parody era, they did three original shows: Me and My Dick, Firebringer, and, in a gray area, Starship, which has a setting modeled after Starship Troopers with a plot that combines Aliens with The Little Mermaid (1989), all three influences being extremely blatant. As of 2018, they've abandoned the musical parody genre.
• Top Hat
• A significant chunk of Don Bluth's work are original Animated Musicals: An American Tail, All Dogs Go to Heaven, A Troll in Central Park, and The Pebble and the Penguin.

Parodies

• Bob's Burgers: The Season 5 premiere "Work Hard or Die Trying, Girl" revolves around Gene's musical version of Die Hard being passed over for the annual school play over Courtney Wheeler's musical version of Working Girl.
• The Simpsons has numerous fictional musical adaptations which parody the concept by drawing from bizarre and/or inappropriate sources:
  • In "A Streetcar Named Marge", she stars as Blanche in a musical adaptation of A Streetcar Named Desire (opposite Ned Flanders as Stanley!) whose cheery closing song "You Can Always Depend on the Kindness of Strangers!" managed to completely miss the point of the original line. When Andre Previn made A Streetcar Named Desire into an opera later in The '90s, he explicitly cited the "Simpsons scenario" ("Stella, Stella, can't you hear me yell-a?") as an instance of what he tried to avoid; its libretto simply sets the original text of the play to music. It should be noted that this was a case of Serendipity Writes the Plot, as they were unable to get the rights to the play itself, but were informed by a FOX lawyer that writing songs based on it would be fair game.
  • The page image is from Stop the Planet of the Apes: I Want to Get Off! ("A Fish Called Selma"), which features breakdancing orangutans and spontaneous piano solos.
  • Smithers wrote and starred in a musical inspired by Malibu Stacy dolls in "Homer vs. Dignity," providing an example of a musical based on a pre-existing intellectual property while not being a direct adaptation.
    Mr. Burns: A show about a doll? Ha! Why not write a musical about the common cat? Or the King of Siam?
  • Kickin' It: A Musical Journey Through the Betty Ford Center from "The City of New York vs. Homer Simpson"
  • The musical adaptation of Itchy and Scratchy from "Girls Just Want to Have Sums" parodies the style of the Broadway version of The Lion King (1994).
  • "Lisa with an 'S'" returns to New York City and Broadway shows noted in passing include Candy Crush: The Musical and the very meta Spider-Pig: Turn Off the Pork.
  • "How Lisa Got Her Marge Back" has them visit Capital City to see a musical version of The Bad News Bears. Other shows playing that fit this trope include Paul Blart: Mall Cop: The Musical and The Riddler on the Roof.
• The Producers notes a musical adaptation of Hamlet, called Funny Boy; it isn't depicted, but its audience informs us "It's the worst show in town!" in the first scene of the stage version, which takes place on its opening and closing night. While hunting for a show that will "close on page four", Max reads out what is clearly the first line of a musical adaptation of Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis. It's rejected for being too good.
• The Fairly OddParents! is another twofer: Waterworld: The Musical and, as a Continuity Nod to the episode parodying action movies, Loose Cannon Cop Who Doesn't Play by the Rules: The Musical.
• MAD had "Keep on Trekkin'", a Star Trek musical that addressed the post-cancellation success of TOS in reruns in The '70s. It ends with the cast turning down a network executive's offer of a Revival because they're making so much money already — it was written before the movie franchise was established in 1979.
  • "Coming Musicals" in MAD #41 suggested that, when Broadway starts running out of likely source material, new musicals could be based on telephone directories, railroad timetables, and cook books, producing song hits like "The Bell-Box Of My Heart" and "Oh, Your Lips Say Central Standard."
  • MAD #100 did an article conceiving musical versions of Moby-Dick, Julius Caesar, A Tale of Two Cities and Tarzan.
  • Later issues had musical versions of Star Wars ("The Force and I") and The Lord of the Rings ("The Ring and I"). Note that Moby Dick, A Tale of Two Cities and The Lord of the Rings have since been adapted into serious stage musicals, and Disney's Tarzan received a Screen-to-Stage Adaptation. (Lord of the Rings has also since been... rather less seriously adapted.)
  • MADtv (1995) did a skit in the late 1990s spoofing how campy the Batman movie franchise had become by having the 5th one done as a Broadway musical. In fact, Warner Bros. actually had Jim Steinman and David Ives working on a Batman musical for several years, but it didn't pan out.
  • Erin Brockovich: "I may dress like a cheap table dancer / but give me a call if you think you've got cancer.."
  • The only thing preventing a Star Wars musical is George Lucas's dignity. But it has been adapted into an opera. Four times, in fact.
• A Tale of Two Cities is also staged as a musical (Two Cities) in the Martin Short comedy A Simple Wish.
• In the movie The Tall Guy Jeff Goldblum's character, trying to get into serious drama, finds himself starring in Elephant!, a musical version of The Elephant Man.
• On 30 Rock, Jenna has been in musical versions of Con Air and Mystic Pizza.
• A cutaway reveals Peter once performed in Red Dawn — The Musical on Family Guy. "I'm a Wolverine/And my hatred keeps me warm..."
• Batman Beyond: "Out Of The Past" opens with Terry taking Bruce Wayne to a musical about... Batman. Bruce was not pleased with the show's lighthearted campy approach about his crime-fighting career. The sad part is that the idea for it came from the fact that someone actually proposed a Batman musical in real life.
  Bruce: You hate me, don't you?
• Fans! once had a character perform in a musical adaptation of the Book of Leviticus.
• Sluggy Freelance had Zoe and Kent go see "The Cylon King," a Broadway musical based on Battlestar Galactica. Kent remarks they should have gotten tickets to "Thoroughly Merciless Ming" instead.
• Gilligan's Island had the castaways staging a musical of version of Hamlet to try to persuade a producer to return to civilisation and take them with him. He steals their idea, returns to civilisation and leaves them stranded.
• In a Monty Python's Flying Circus sketch, E. Henry Thripshaw announces that he hopes to turn his next disease into a musical (after his first disease became an In Name Only film).
• The web series "The Battery's Down" parodies this with Ferris Bueller's Day Off The Musical and Home Alone The Musical.
• An episode of The Critic features Jay and Doris going to Andrew Lloyd Webber's newest musical, Hunch!, an adaptation of The Hunchback of Notre Dame. The sequence takes swipes at the commercialism ("Brought to you by Toyota: the hatchback fit for a hunchback!") and strange staging common to ALW's musicals. Note that this episode predated the Disney adaptation of Hunchback — which had its own problems trying to make the story a musical that could also move merchandise — by two years, and the more straightforward Notre-Dame de Paris by four.
• Rugrats has Reptar On Ice, an Ice Capades-like musical show based on a Godzilla-like action film franchise.
• In Andrew Lippa's version of The Wild Party, the brothers d'Armano write a musical called Good Heavens, based on the Bible.
• In one episode of The Venture Bros., Rusty wants to make a musical about his life (a Johnny Quest boy-adventurer sort of childhood with its own cartoon show), though this never gets off the ground. He does get a duet with the in-universe version of Spider-Man, the Brown Widow, which might be a parody of Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark. For a bonus joke, Brown Widow mentions being in The Sound of Music as a kid, the film of which featured Nicholas Hammond, the 1970s TV Spider-Man, as Friedrich Von Trapp.
• One episode of Phineas and Ferb revisits one of their early adventures:
  "Y'know Ferb, one of the best times we ever had was when we built that rollercoaster. We should do it again! This time, as a musical! Whadya say? We'll do all the same things, except we'll break into spontaneous singing and choreography with no discernable music source!"
• The movie Hamlet 2 is about a high-school drama teacher and failed actor trying to stage a musical sequel to the play (which is probably most famous for killing off nearly every major character by the end). Naturally, everyone else thinks it's an utterly terrible idea.
• An episode of Seinfeld features Scarsdale Surprise, a Tony Award-winning musical based on the highly publicized murder of famous diet book author Dr. Herman Tarnower. It also has a weirdly meta version of this, with another nominee being a musical of the fictitious movie Rochelle, Rochelle that the gang watched in a previous episode.
• The first episode of season 5 of Jonathan Creek, "The Letters of Septiumus Noone", is set around an operatic adaptation of The Mystery of the Yellow Room by Gaston Leroux, which Locked Room Mystery fan Jonathan thinks is a travesty.
• Jon and Al Kaplan make one-song snippets of fictional musical adaptations of 80s action movies on their Youtube channel.
• In the radio comedy What Does the K Stand For?, Stephen's form teacher claims to have been involved in a musical version of Gone with the Wind called Wind! with Lionel Blair as Rhett Butler.
• The plot of the Robert Rankin novel Sex and Drugs and Sausage Rolls is Poole and Omalley creating a musical based on Armageddon: The Musical.
• In End Boss's World, Flash Man stars as Neo (and the special effects crew) of The Matrix: The Musical, co-starring Dr Mario as Morpheus.
• One episode of Life in Pieces featured a school play based on The Silence of the Lambs.
• The Team StarKid web series Movies, Musicals, & Me is a Mockumentary set in a world where all famous films have been overshadowed by their Broadway musical adaptations.
• Clickhole once played this as an Exaggerated Trope; one article is just a list of gifs that could be adapted into musicals.
• One episode of Pepper Ann begins with the title character finishing a lead role in a musical based on an in-series plush toy. She's complimented for her performance, then discover she was mistaken for an Identical Stranger who starred in a musical called Phantom of the Apes.
• Death Becomes Her opens with Madeline appearing in an awful musical version of Sweet Bird Of Youth called Songbird! that bombs.
• Robot Chicken's Star Wars special featured excerpts of "Star Wars: The Musical." They also had "Le Wrath di Khan", which was Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan as a literal Space Opera.
• Mad About You once had the Buchmans attending Moby!, a musical version of Moby-Dick.
• One episode of Disney's Doug revolved around a musical that Guy was inspired to make, based on the Mona Lisa. Yep, he made a musical based on a painting. His reasoning was that it was a surefire hit because the painting is so famous. After demanding several rewrites to make it even more marketable, it ended up lifting elements from Cinderella, Moby Dick, and Pinocchio, as well as featuring a scene during The American Civil War.
  Mona Lisa, please say cheese-a
  And grin a toothy grin for me
  Mona Lisa, I, I say please-a
  Your biggest smile I gotta see!
• An episode of Supernatural (''Fan Fiction'') revolves around a high school play that is a musical adaptation of the in-universe book series, Supernatural. (Which were unknowingly (well, so he says) written about Sam and Dean's life by 'Carver Edlund', aka the Prophet Chuck Shurley, aka God.)
• The Art of the Steal: While attempting to explain to the border guard why his wearing a false beard, Francie claims that he is in a play called Witness!: The Musical. (And, yes, he specifically mentions that it has an exclamation mark.)
• When trying to give a reason as for why the title character of Hawkeye (2021) would be in New York, the showrunner joked he was going to Rogers: The Musical. Marvel surprisingly bought the idea, bringing in the creators of Hairspray to write a song, depicted on-stage with hilarious Stylistic Suck.
• Critic's Choice by Ira Levin mentions several fictional musical productions adapted from famous novels:
  • When Angela tells Parker that S. P. Champlain, a normally reliable producer who also did an apparently woeful musical version of Anthony Adverse, has read her new play and thinks it's wonderful, her husband sarcastically bursts into an "I Am" Song and dance:
    "Hello, I'm Anthony Adverse,
    And tho' this may be a bad verse,
    I'm mighty glad that I'm he-ere!"
  • Dion, hired to direct Angela's play, was previously involved with Oh, Doctor!, whose success he credits to it being "built on the best foundation of any musical in the past five years. There aren't many novels around that can top Arrowsmith, you know."
  • Ivy, arriving fresh off the sets of an excruciating flop, tells Parker he was right about there being "some books that simply cannot be made into musical comedies and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea is one of them!"

---