“Purple Rain,” Prince Rogers Nelson’s breakout rise-of-a-rock-star film, is being adapted into a stage musical featuring some of the pop musician’s best-loved songs.
Orin Wolf, the producer who previously shepherded the Tony-winning adaptation of “The Band’s Visit” to the stage, and who is currently backing the theatrical adaptation of another music industry movie, “Buena Vista Social Club,” announced Monday that he is developing the musical, based on the 1984 film.
The stage adaptation will feature a book by playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, a MacArthur Foundation “genius” grant winner whose family drama, “Appropriate,” is now running on Broadway. The director is Lileana Blain-Cruz, whose revival of Thornton Wilder’s “The Skin of Our Teeth” (with new material contributed by Jacobs-Jenkins) had a short run on Broadway in 2022.
“Purple Rain” is about an ambitious…
