EGN NEWS DESK
Netflix, the streaming behemoth that has advanced from mailing out DVDs in crimson envelopes to changing into a massively vital participant within the leisure trade, is embarking on a brand new journey: producing on Broadway.
The firm will decide up its first Broadway credit score this spring as a producer of “Patriots,” by Peter Morgan, the creator of the hit Netflix sequence “The Crown.” The new play is about an oligarch who was an early supporter of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia however then fell out with him and wound up dead.
Even earlier than “Patriots” begins its Broadway previews on April 1, Netflix is already within the early phases of growing a display screen adaptation of the story, in accordance with Emily Feingold, a Netflix spokeswoman.
“Patriots” will likely be Netflix’s first Broadway credit score, however not its first stage enterprise. The firm is actively concerned as a producer of “Stranger Things: The First Shadow,” a play now operating in London that may be a prequel of kinds to the favored Netflix streaming sequence. The “Stranger Things” manufacturing is predicted to return to Broadway, however the timing and different specifics are unknown.
Netflix’s foray into Broadway producing comes at a time when the leisure trade has been aggressively working to monetize mental property — adapting fashionable titles and franchises on many alternative platforms, together with not solely movie, tv and stage but additionally books, video video games and immersive experiences.
Broadway has lengthy had the eye of Hollywood studios — Disney, Warner Bros. and Universal have been notably lively in pursuing stage diversifications of their movies. And for a while now, the recording trade has been actively concerned on Broadway, seeing the stage as one other strategy to repurpose pop track catalogs.
Now new gamers are exhibiting indicators of curiosity within the theater trade, which is constant to wrestle to recuperate from the pandemic.
Audible, a subsidiary of Amazon, is leasing a theater in Greenwich Village — the Minetta Lane — and has been commonly staging work there and recording the exhibits for launch on its audio app. The firm this week will stage its first commissioned musical, referred to as “Dead Outlaw,” which tells the true story of an American bandit whose physique turned a carnival exhibit.
And A24, the impartial movie studio, mentioned final 12 months that it had acquired the Cherry Lane Theater within the West Village, including that it deliberate to make use of the constructing for dwell theater and movie programming however releasing few particulars.
Netflix has purpose to really feel hopeful about “Patriots.” In addition to “The Crown,” his six-season sequence about Queen Elizabeth II, Morgan has had success on stage with history-based dramas, together with “Frost/Nixon” and “The Audience.”
“Patriots,” based mostly on the lifetime of Boris A. Berezovsky, was written lengthy earlier than this month’s loss of life of one other Putin critic, Aleksei A. Navalny, however Navalny’s loss of life is certain to make it really feel extra well timed.
The play, which is scheduled to open April 22 on the Ethel Barrymore Theater, additionally arrives with a observe document. It has already had two runs in London — a nonprofit manufacturing in 2022 on the Almeida Theater, and a industrial manufacturing final 12 months within the West End — with which Netflix was not concerned, however which gave the corporate’s executives a possibility to see it. Reviewing the preliminary manufacturing for The New York Times, the critic Matt Wolf referred to as it “gripping.”
The Broadway manufacturing is to star Michael Stuhlbarg as Berezovsky; Will Keen will play Putin, reprising a efficiency that gained him an Olivier Award final 12 months. The manufacturing is being capitalized for as much as $8 million, in accordance with a submitting with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Netflix has additionally proven its curiosity in theater in different methods: It has introduced quite a lot of diversifications of stage productions to the display screen, together with the musicals “The Prom,” “Matilda,” “13” and “Tick, Tick … Boom!” and the performs “The Boys within the Band” and “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom.” Netflix additionally filmed for streaming staged performances of the musical “Diana” and the live performance present “Springsteen on Broadway.”
The stage productions of “Stranger Things” and “Patriots” share a lead producer in Sonia Friedman, a London-based impresario who commonly produces each within the West End and on Broadway. Friedman isn’t any stranger to working with massive model mental property and huge leisure corporations — she can be one of many lead producers of “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.”
