Stage adaptations of films are all the rage right now on both sides of the Atlantic. Next year, a stage version of the 1998 Best Picture Oscar winner Shakespeare in Love will open in London’s West End, producers said today.
Lee Hall (Billy Elliot) will be adapting the film, which featured a witty screenplay by Tom Stoppard and Marc Norman. The team won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay.
According to Playbill, Declan Donnellan is directing and Nick Ormerod is the designer. The two created the international theater company Cheek by Jowl.
“Everyone who loves the theater loves what Tom Stoppard and Marc Norman created with the miracle that is Shakespeare in Love,” Disney Theatrical Productions president Thomas Schumacher said in a statement, reports THR. “It is a valentine to the theater and what better way to celebrate that than to turn to consummate theater artists.”
Previews will start in July 2014 at the Noel Coward Theatre. There are no immediate plans for a Broadway production, but if the U.K. audiences like it, the play would likely reach the U.S.
The cast and remaining crew have not been announced.
Shakespeare in Love won seven Oscars and is one of the few comedies to take Best Picture. It was directed by John Madden and produced by Miramax. The film centers on Will Shakespeare (Joseph Fiennes), who is in search for an inspiration for his next play and finds it in Viola (Gwyneth Paltrow), who admires his work.
Disney Theatrical also announced a Broadway version of The Princess Bride this week.
image: Amazon