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Screen-to-Stage Adaptation

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Sugar, butter, and flour on-camera and on-stage.note 

Blank Paper: ...More recently, musicals have been based on movies like My Favorite Year, Footloose, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, Big, Saturday Night Fever, The Wedding Singer, The Full Monty, The Producers (inhales) Thoroughly Modern Millie, Hairspray, Beauty and the Beast, Billy Elliot, Spamalot—
Jeff: Wow! So movies make good musicals?
Blank Paper: Well, they make musicals.
— [title of show]

It's usually the case that hit plays get turned into movies. But more and more nowadays, the opposite is happening, with films being translated for the stage. Some say it's a sign of intellectual bankruptcy in theatre. Hollywood has the same problem, but there are a lot more new successful movies in the last two decades than new successful plays. So the stealing ends up being one way.

These are usually musicals even when they weren't in the first place (see All Musicals Are Adaptations); Adaptation Decay usually occurs here. Movie musicals are also frequently adapted for the stage, and these tend to acquire additional songs in the stage version.

This trope can be taken one step further, by going from movie, to stage musical, to Recursive Adaptation movie-of-the-stage-musical.

Separately, in Japan, 2.5D Theatre has emerged as a new branch of the anime sphere. Rather than a "safe bet", or an attempt to cash in on a popular movie, as the Broadway examples are sometimes seen, 2.5D productions are made for fans, as a new and vibrant expression of fan love, though there are exceptions. See the folder below for more information.

Inversion of The Film of the Play.

(Original title in parentheses if necessary).

    open/close all folders 

    Film Musicals into Stage Musicals 

    Non-Musical Films into Stage Musicals 

    Non-Musical Films into Straight Plays 
  • Marcel Pagnol's 1930s "Marseille Trilogy" started with the films adaptations of two plays, Marius and Fanny. Then he wrote a third film, César, in 1936. Said film was adapted into a play in 1946.
  • Calendar Girls: Originally a true story, the tale of a group of WI members' creation of a nude calendar to benefit a local cancer ward was first made into a film, and then the film was adapted by Tim Firth into a stage play.
  • Clue on Stage: A 2018 stage adaptation of the 1985 cult comedy classic (based on the board game), using Jonathan Lynn's original script with alterations done by Hunter Foster, Eric Price, and Sandy Rustin. The stageplay follows the same basic plot and script as the movie, with a few new changes — Mrs. Peacock is now a religious zealot in addition to being the corrupt wife of a senator, Professor Plum's lustful tendencies have been expanded into him now believing himself to be God's gift to women, and — most notably — there are no alternate endings, with the movie's third ending being the only one used here.
  • Dead Poets Society
  • How to Train Your Dragon Arena Spectacular
  • The Hunt (2012) received a 2019 London stage adaptation as a play with music (but not quite to the point of being The Musical). Details about the play are in a subsection on the film's page.
  • Night of the Living Dead: The public domain status, and relatively low budget the film had makes it an easy and convincing transfer onto stage.
  • The 39 Steps is a Played for Laughs adaptation of the 1935 film The 39 Steps that uses just four actors! (Although it was originally a novel, The Thirty-Nine Steps.)
  • The Man from Earth
  • The Pink Panther Strikes Again: Created for amateur stagings in The '80s, this is a Pragmatic Adaptation that scales down the action but preserves the style and tone of the film.
  • Point Break Live! is a tongue-in-cheek retelling that uses an audience member to fill Keanu Reeves's role (dialogue is provided on cue cards).
  • 12 Angry Men: Technically, it was a play before it was a movie. However, it started as a teleplay on CBS' Studio One program, and the two versions have almost exactly the same script. The movie has an extra, very short, intro scene.
  • Terminator the Second is a stage adaptation of Terminator 2: Judgment Day that replaces all dialogue with matching dialogue from William Shakespeare plays.

    2.5D Stage Plays (Japanese Adaptations of Anime, Games, Manga) 

2.5D began in the 1990's with series like the Sailor Moon musicals, and Sakura Wars. In the late 2010's, it has become its own vibrant corner of the anime world, with almost 200 plays produced in 2018. The label 2.5D was coined in 2015 by the producer of the Tenimyu series. They are called 2.5D because they exist between the 2D world of anime and the 3D world of regular theatre.

These productions tend to be made for audiences who are already fans of the source material. They also tend to be series that follow successive story arcs.

How do new fans catch up? Another unique point about 2.5D is that the plays usually have short runs, followed by a Blu-ray release. Popular series like Touken Ranbu and Ensemble Stars! will run for 2-3 months and tour throughout Japan and even overseas, while other plays will often only run for a week. 2.5D combines the focuses of live theater and video media in ways that other productions don't often do. This means the actors have to act for the camera and the back row simultaneously.

The venues themselves become gathering places for fans, and the atmosphere is like that of an anime event.

The titles are usually abbreviated as (first two syllables of title) + "sta" for a stage play, or "myu" for a musical (e.g. Kuroshitsuji Musical becomes KuroMyu, Tsukiuta Stage play becomes TsukiSta, etc.)

The 2.5D sphere also includes productions that are not adaptations, such as Kuro to Shiro and Messiah.

2.5D productions with their own pages:

  • MANKAI STAGE A3!, based on the mobile game A3. It's a stage play about stage actors and staff preparing for a stage play.
  • Cesare - Il Creatore che ha distrutto is based on a manga, but it breaks away from the boundaries of 2.5D in several ways. It was premiered at the legendary Meijiza, the oldest theatre in Tokyo, opening the theatre's 150th anniversary season; most of the older cast and Cesare himself are played by actors from the musical sphere, not the 2.5D sphere; and the quality of the music surpasses 2.5D — most 2.5D shows don't involve a full orchestra. Nonetheless, the students other than Cesare were all played in the original cast by actors who have appeared in the big 2.5D series such as Touken Ranbu, Tsukipro, A3, and Prince of Tennis.
  • Musical The Prince of Tennis, known by fans as Tenimyu. It has had four "seasons", which cycle through a series of 12 musicals. There is also a separate musical series of The New Prince of Tennis.
  • Persona 3: The Weird Masquerade, based on the video game Persona 3. It's particularly notable for being the only piece of media to give the female protagonist a name, Kotone Shiomi, which would eventually be adopted as her Canon Name.
  • Sailor Moon, known as Seramyu.
  • Tsukiuta, which takes the idol characters of the source material into elaborate fantasy settings, with over 25 plays in the franchise so far, over 5 series.
  • Identity V - three plays in 2019-2021.
  • Touken Ranbu's separate stage play and musical adaptations, with over 25 plays in the franchise between both series.
  • YoRHa, based on the Nier series.

Other anime, manga, and games with 2.5D stage adaptations.

    Other Stage Adaptations of TV Series and Video Games 
  • Takarazuka Revue has done musical adaptations of manga as far back as 1924, though their most famous is The Rose of Versailles, first performed in the 1970's. These are not considered 2.5D, as they appeal to Takarazuka fans primarily, and others who are not fans of the source material. Other series they have adapted include Sengoku Basara, Ace Attorney (Using the English names), and Red River (1995).
  • Kingdom Hearts actually has unofficial stage adaptations done in Germany by the performing group Tsuki no Senshi. They did adaptations for the original Kingdom Hearts, Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories, and Kingdom Hearts II.
  • The Addams Family: officially adapted from the original comic strip rather than TV show, though the producers did obtain permission to use the show's famous Theme Tune in the score.
  • Are You Being Served?: In the summer of 1976, a stage adaptation ran at the Winter Gardens in Blackpool. Directed by Robert Redfarn, John Inman, Mollie Sugden, Frank Thornton, Wendy Richard, and Nicholas Smith reprised their characters while Mr. Lucas, Mr. Grainger, and Mr. Mash were recast. The play had basically the same plot as the film version which would debut the next year, though Young Mr. Grace's role was omitted entirely and Mr. Mash had less to do than Mr. Harman in the film. The play has occasionally been run at other theatres since.
  • Are You Being Served? was adapted for the stage in 2012 by The Comedy Theatre Company, with the original actors reprising their roles (alongside Pauline Quirke and Linda Robson's real-life children playing Travis).
  • Dragnet: stage play based on the famed police procedural franchise adapted by James Reach, using as its story a Locked Room Mystery done on the radio as "The Big Bible" and later on TV as "The Bullet".
  • Happy Days: a New Musical
  • In the 1980s there were two stage adaptations of The BBC Scotland sitcom City Lights, starring the original cast.
  • Doctor Who stage plays include Doctor Who and the Daleks in the Seven Keys to Doomsday (1974) and Doctor Who — The Ultimate Adventure (1989). The earliest—and possibly Ur-Example—is The Curse of the Daleks, written by Terry Nation and David Whitaker, from 1965. The episode "Midnight" was also adapted to the stage in a small student production.
  • A musical adaptation of Only Fools and Horses, written by Jim Sullivan (son of series writer John Sullivan) and Paul Whitehouse premiered in London in 2019.
  • The SpongeBob Musical is a Broadway musical adaptation of SpongeBob SquarePants, with a score composed by many famous artists, including Aerosmith, They Might Be Giants, The Flaming Lipsnote , John Legend, Lady Antebellum, and David Bowie.
  • Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em: A stage adaptation, written and directed by Guy Unsworth based on the TV series began a UK tour at the Wyvern Theatre, Swindon in February 2018 starring Joe Pasquale as Frank Spencer, with Sarah Earnshaw as Betty and Susie Blake as Mrs Fisher. Due to the success of the 2018 tour, the production began another tour in February 2020. However, due to the coronavirus pandemic, many dates were cancelled.
  • Really Rosie has a stage play that is almost a straight adaptation of the original special, some extra songs and few Darker and Edgier elements are thrown in.

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