The 30 best film-to-musical adaptations

Twenty-first-century Broadway darling Sutton Foster made her first big splash as the flustered but determined 1920s heroine of this utterly retro throwback to the romps of yesteryear. While the musical's plot is winkingly lifted from its 1967 film source, the peppy score is mostly new, and songwriters Jeanine Tesori and Dick Scanlan ably capture a period air of urgent aspiration.—Adam Feldman

A rather grand adaptation of Billy Wilder's classic 1950 takedown of deranged Hollywood grandeur, Sunset Boulevard is composer Andrew Lloyd Webber's last quasi-successful Broadway musical to date. The original production's behind-the-scenes drama—London star Patti LuPone was replaced with Glenn Close for New York—may have upstaged the show itself, but the role of washed-up silent-film queen Norma Desmond is an all-you-can-eat buffet for scenery-chewing divas.—Adam Feldman

Although the Toni Collette chick flick Muriel's Wedding prominently features ABBA songs, the basic plot to this global phenomenon was borrowed from the Gina Lollobrigida sex farce Buona Sera, Mrs. Campbell (1968). In it, the Italian bombshell strings along three American ex-GIs who slept with her in the final days of WWII. Mamma Mia! retained the "I have three possible dads" concept, moved the action to Greece and showered the mother-daughter bonding tale with ABBA's insanely danceable hits.—David Cote

After resurrecting its animated-musicals franchise with The Little Mermaid (1989), Disney had another hit on its hands with Belle and her Beast, and wasted no time in ushering its 1991 animated flick to the Broadway stage. Composer Alan Menken (who had written songs for Mermaid) penned seven new tunes for this lavish production, which ran for 13 years and heralded the Disney era on Broadway. Although Disney Theatrical has stumbled since then (The Little Mermaid, Tarzan), Beauty proves that a catchy score and bright, bustling design make cartoons come alive.—David Cote

Playwright Douglas Carter Beane's sparkling camp frolic builds a guilty-pleasure palace from the ruins of a ludicrous 1980 Olivia Newton-John flick about a roller-skating Greek muse. Illuminated by a bright Electric Light Orchestra score, and by original stars Kerry Butler (as an Aussie goddess) and Cheyenne Jackson (as the California himbo she loves), this affectionate send-up of Hollywood schlock is swell on wheels.—Adam Feldman

Originally helmed by Tommy Tune, this stylish adaptation of the famous 1932 MGM film (and Vicki Baum's 1929 novel) depicts disparate guests at a luxury lodging in Weimar Germany. The show's chilly air of wheel-of-fortune melodrama was warmed, in the original cast, by Jane Krakowski as a would-be starlet and the incomparable Michael Jeter as a mousy accountant letting loose.—Adam Feldman

Director John Tiffany and choreographer Steven Hoggett preserved the brooding but whimsical tone of the 2007 indie flick, setting the action in a scruffy pub Irish populated by colorful locals. The sweetly awkward not-quite-romance between guitar-strumming Guy and quirky Czech immigrant Girl struck a chord with audiences, and ran for nearly three years.—David Cote

It's hard enough trying to retain the power of a story moving from one medium to another; try jumping across cultures. Book writer Terrence McNally and composer-lyricist David Yazbek took the basic premise of the 1997 English indie hit—unemployed blue-collar proles become strippers to make money—and moved the action to recession-hit Buffalo, New York. The translation worked quite nicely, powered by Yazbek's funky, frisky, pop-powered score.—David Cote

Burt Bacharach and Hal David, who helped define the 1960s with their trademark sound—personal lyrics set to brassy, zigzag rhythms—wrote songs for just one book musical: Neil Simon's adaptation of Billy Wilder's The Apartment (1960), a morality tale about sexual and corporate compromise. Although the show's cynical 2010 revival was marred by miscasting and nonsensical additions to the score, its dramatic and musical themes still sound surprisingly fresh.—Adam Feldman

Broadway loves a crazy diva, and the Maysles brothers' 1975 documentary has two: Edith Ewing Bouvier Beale ("Big Edie") and her daughter Edith Bouvier Beale ("Little Edie"). These eccentric recluses inhabited a crumbling, cat-infested ruin of a house on Long Island, bickering and living in filth. In turning their story into a musical, book writer Doug Wright, composer Scott Frankel and lyricist Michael Korie invent a first-act backstory to depict their past lives as glamorous society ladies, long before the descent. The score follows suit, beginning in Tin Pan Alley and ending in art-song angst. Sealing the deal were two bravely bizarre performances by Tony winners Christine Ebersole and Mary Louise Wilson.—David Cote

Love is an implacable disease, wasting and contagious, in Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine's grim adaptation of the 1981 Italian film Passione d'Amore. Eschewing the composer's characteristic sense of irony, Sondheim's score is nearly humorless and edged with self-pity. Yet this tale of a sickly woman who stalks a handsome soldier has the power nonetheless to linger in the listener like a virus.—Adam Feldman

Devotees of Federico Fellini's surreal cinematic classic 8 1/2 (1963) probably never got past the title of its Broadway version. See, it's hard to rhyme neatly with "eight and a half," so composer-lyricist Maury Yeston changed it to Nine. Arthur Kopit's book focused on the women in capricious filmmaker Guido Contini's life, making it less about modernity and Catholic guilt and more about a misunderstood, womanizing artist.—David Cote

The story of a working-class English boy set free by ballet had one of the quicker turnarounds from screen to stage. That's partly due to the fact that Stephen Daldry directed both the 2000 film and its musical reincarnation. The raw materials of the screenplay were naturally mined by Daldry, book writer Lee Hall and tunesmith Elton John: plenty of narrative-pushing dance numbers and a score filled with blue-collar anthems, pop and a slice of Tchaikovsky.—David Cote

Mel Brooks's adaptation of his 1968 cult film—about sleazy producers who plot to mount a catastrophic flop but accidentally put the hit in Hitler—drove audiences to frenzies of laughter, set off bidding wars for tickets and won more Tonys than any other show in history (including one for the great Nathan Lane). After having bottomed out in the purple reign of British pop megamusicals, American musical comedy was back in business with a vengeance.—Adam Feldman

There's a very fine line (a hairbreadth, you might say) between bad-taste kitsch and Broadway brilliance, and this bouffant, pop-driven take on the 1988 John Waters film crossed the line with manic exuberance. Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman's joyous, bubblegum score and Jack O'Brien's candy-colored production dialed back some of the cheeky subversion of the film, but a cross-dressed Harvey Fierstein maintained its camp cred.—David Cote

The quintessential manifesto of Broadway's show-must-go-on ideology, this backstage story of a plucky understudy who steps up to the lead at short notice—"Sawyer, you're going out a youngster, but you've got to come back a star!"—didn't make it to the Great White Way until 1980. The 1933 source film is an anti-Depression treatment best remembered for Busby Berkeley's extravagant choreography; the musical, directed by the masterful Gower Champion (who died on opening night), supplements the story with extra standards from the Harry Warren–Al Dubin songbook and massive cloudbursts of synchronized tap. 42nd Street's keystone tune, "The Lullaby of Broadway," is a paradoxically rousing paean to our nostalgic collective showbiz dream. And it's a dream that sometimes even comes true: In 1987, a teenage second understudy named Catherine Zeta-Jones went on one night as Peggy Sawyer in the show's London production—and came back, yes, a star.—Adam Feldman

Disney took a big risk in entrusting its hit 1994 cartoon to the visionary director-designer Julie Taymor, but the gamble has paid off gorgeously. Taymor takes a reactionary story about the natural right of kings, in which the circle of life itself is pitted against a queeny villain and his jive-talking ghetto pals, and transforms it into a celebration of color and movement. Through elegant puppetry, Taymor populates the stage with an amazing menagerie of African beasts in procession, flight and stampede; the movie's Elton John–Tim Rice score is newly surrounded by African rhythm and music. A few vestiges of Disneyland remain in the comic-relief scenes, but Taymor's bold approach expands a simple cub into the pride of Broadway, not merely a fable of heredity but a celebration of heritage.—Adam Feldman

Not much was lost in translation when Stephen Sondheim and book writer Hugh Wheeler turned Ingmar Bergman's wry 1955 comedy Smiles of a Summer Night into a sparkling musical about old loves, young lust and romantic regret. Wheeler hewed closely to the original screenplay, and Sondheim's penchant for bruised and brooding emotional states served the material brilliantly. And early '70s audiences were highly receptive to a show that combined old-world sophistication and musical-theater wit. Still legendary is the original Broadway production, staged by Hal Prince at the top of his powers, gloriously designed by set wizard Boris Aronson and featuring a cast led by Len Cariou, Glynis Johns and Hermione Gingold.—David Cote

Charity Hope Valentine is the poster girl for the Broadway musical's signature state of delusional optimism. In Federico Fellini's Nights of Cabiria (1957), the character is a prostitute played by Fellini's Chaplinesque wife, Giulietta Masina; the bittersweet Charity of the musical—originated by the ridiculously lovable Gwen Verdon, wife of director Bob Fosse—is a New York dance hall hostess, with a well-used body but a virginal soul. (She has a heart tattooed on her upper arm, right where a sleeve would go.) Cy Coleman and Dorothy Fields's classic score (which includes the neostandards "Big Spender" and "If My Friends Could See Me Now") nails the boundless rhythms of city life and the limited dreams of people like Charity: a little tramp who's trampled down but always up for more.—Adam Feldman

A musical about a nebbishy florist and a wish-granting, bloodthirsty plant from outer space: Sounds crazy, no? But in Little Shop of Horrors, librettist Howard Ashman and composer Alan Menken took a humble 1960 B-flick and grew it to splendiferous bloom. Smarter, sweeter and darker than Roger Corman's film, this marvel of musical cross-breeding has it all: wit, heart, irony, edge, retro-pop zip and a Faustian zap of a moral. (In the musical's Venus-flytrap twist, love makes the world go bust.) "Suddenly Seymour" and "Somewhere That's Green"—both originally sung by the unique Ellen Greene as Audrey, the definitive hothouse-flower ditz—are standouts in Little Shop's generally outstanding score. This little show's smash Off Broadway run launched Ashman and Menken into their reinvention of the Disney animated musical, and planted the seeds from which three decades of musical theater have grown.—Adam Feldman