Well folks, despite studios' utter sheepishness about it, the musical seems to be back in a big way. The singing may not be advertised in the marketing (even Wicked mostly managed to obscure its songs in the trailers), but this year alone has seen Mean Girls, Joker 2, Emilia Perez, The End, and those two very successful witches. And it seems the trend is likely to continue for a while, as evidenced by the just-announced remake of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.
According to Deadline, the Chitty Chitty Bang Bang remake is in early development at Amazon MGM Studios with Barbara Broccoli and Michael Wilson’s Eon Productions. If those names look familiar to you, it's because they're the producers behind the James Bond franchise; Bond author Ian Fleming is also the author of the children's book Chitty Chitty Bang Bang: The Magical Car. The Broccolis have been involved in all the CCBB adaptations since the 1968 movie starring Dick Van Dyke, which featured a screenplay by beloved children's author Roald Dahl. (The creepy Child Catcher, who doesn't appear in the original book, does have a Dahlian air about him, though his origins are disputed.)
Per Deadline, Cubby Broccoli produced the movie, while Dana Broccoli was one of the producers of the 2022 stage musical. The stage show featured six new songs by Robert and Richard Sherman, who were nominated for an Oscar for the movie's title song. Quite possibly, this remake will be one of those movie-to-stage musical-to-movie-again adaptations (à la Mean Girls or Matilda) featuring the new songs. But we don't have any solid details on the film yet, just that execs are "currently setting meetings with potential writers and directors."
What we do know is that this is just one of several major movie musicals currently in development. Rob Marshall is doing a new Guys And Dolls. It was just announced that the team behind The Brutalist is making an original musical (Ann Lee) with Amanda Seyfried as the lead. And Disney continues its relentless assault of live-action musical remakes, most recently tapping Tangled. So yeah, I'm thinking we're back.
