25 years ago, a musical drama titled Newsies was made based on the New York City Newsboys Strike of 1899. It flopped, receiving dismal box-office takings and largely negative reviews. Then a strange thing happened. When the movie was released on home video, it began to gain fans steadily and eventually, a large cult following. So huge, that it was adapted into a Broadway stage musical that earned critical success, with two Tony Awards (nominated for 8) under its belt.
The musical’s popularity soared to such heights that it was deemed worthy to be caught on film and made available to anyone who didn’t have the chance to catch its Broadway show. Let’s take a look at 5 interesting facts on this once-spurned, now well-received musical that’s now available on CATCHPLAY. *Watch for free! - see bottom description for details.
Featuring the best of the best
The performance you see in this production combines the members from the original Broadway as well as members of the touring cast.
Bale the newspaper boy
The title role of Jack Kelly was originally portrayed by an 18-year old Christian Bale in the 1992 movie. It was only his second big screen outing after his break-out role in Empire of the Sun (1987). When Bale heard about the movie being turned into a musical, he declined to catch the production, sharing "I'm not really into musicals but I wish them the best. And I'm sure the person playing the character I played exceeded whatever I did, and congratulations to them."
Music from the Disney Maestro
The music from both the movie and the Broadway Musical are scored by composer Alan Menken (pictured above, on the right with Jeremy Jordan who plays Jack Kelly), who is best known for scoring Disney animated productions. Some of his more famous scores are for the Little Mermaid (1989), Beauty and the Beast (1991), Aladdin (1992) and Pocahontas (1995). He won eight Academy Awards for his scoring work on these four films, most notably for the catchy “Under the Sea” in The Little Mermaid.
Social Media Madness
The musical became such a mammoth hit that when the official Broadway Newsies Facebook page was set up and lived, it got over 56,000 likes in just three hours. It now has over 340,000 likes.
Fastest fingers first
The play first opened at the Paper Mill Playhouse Theater in New Jersey on September 15 in 2011, and the advanced tickets were sold out, beating all records held at the Playhouse Box Office. This spurred the production to be brought to the Nederlander Theatre on Broadway. Originally engaged to only have 105 performances, it was subsequently extended to a total of 1,005 performances.
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