From 2002 to 2012, director Michael Grandage was the head of London’s Donmar Warehouse. The position he inherited from Sam Mendes was long on prestige, artistic achievement, and honors. But money? Not so much.But now the director, who long labored in the not-for-profit world, stands to enter the big money as the newly tapped director of the forthcoming Broadway stage adaptation of the Disney film “Frozen.” It’s a prize plum that was dangled before a few of the theater world’s most talented directors, including Alex Timbers (“Peter and the Starcatcher”) and Stephen Daldry (“Billy Elliot”) before Thomas Schumacher, President and Producer of Disney Theatrical Productions, finally settled on the 54-year-old British director.The choice is not necessarily as obvious as, say, if the task had gone to someone like Casey Nicholaw, who turned Disney’s “Aladdin” into a lucrative stage hit after working his magic touch on “Book of Mormon”; or Daldry, who won a Tony Award for the 2008 musical “Billy Elliot” and who has been nominated for the directing Oscar three times, including for the 2000 film version of “Billy Elliot” as well as for “The Hours” and “The Reader.”Although Grandage won a Tony Award for directing “Red,” Jonathan Logan’s drama about Mark Rothko, and also helmed the latest Broadway revival of “Evita,” the director is more conversant with Shakespeare and opera than Rodgers and Hammerstein. In that regard, he fits the mold of Julie Taymor, an experimental director before Disney tapped her to lead “The Lion King” to global success. She was an out-of-the-box choice when Schumacher and Peter Schneider brought her on to graft onto the story a specific theatrical language. That can be exceptionally tricky even with the most accomplished artists as Taymor proved with her Broadway follow-up: the spectacular crash-and-burn of “Spiderman: Turn Off the Dark” with songs by Bono and the Edge.Taymor ended up suing the producers on that show, whom she said were reneging on money owed to her. It was the principle, surely. By conservative estimates, she’d by that time earned hundreds of millions of dollars on royalties from “The Lion King.” As the most financially successful entertain enterprise in history - in 2014 its worldwide gross was stated as $6.2 billion - the musical stands to put more than a half a billion dollars in Taymor’s pocket - if it hasn’t already. And in October, 2017, a re-configured touring production will now join the 23 global productions which have been seen by more than 83 million people.That level of success, of course, is what Disney is aiming for with “Frozen,” which is the highest-grossing animated film in history with $1.2 billion in global receipts. And if Grandage and his team can deliver, they will enjoy massive financial rewards. The new additions include choreographer Christopher Gatelli (Disney’s “Newsies”) and set designer Christopher Oram, Grandage’s life partner and his frequent collaborator. They join librettist Jennifer Lee, who wrote the screenplay and co-directed the film; and the songwriting team of Robert Lopez and his wife, Kristen Anderson-Lopez, who collected an Oscar for the ubiquitous “Let It Go” and who are writing a dozen new songs for the musical.Any forthcoming financial rewards, however, remain a fantasy, especially since things can always go awry. (Disney’s “Tarzan” and “The Little Mermaid” failed to meet expectations.) What will be foremost on minds of Grandage and company - as well as Schumacher’s - is the deadline of August 2017. That is when “Frozen” is set to premiere at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts, which will be followed by a Broadway bow in the Spring of 2018. To say that the expectations for the show will be stratospheric is to undersell it. Last fall, Schumacher told the Hollywood Reporter that the development of “Frozen” “…doesn’t need to be fast. It needs to be great.”With the deadline looming, it now has to be fast and great. Under such pressures, the artists will deserve every penny that falls into their purse.
↧