“Rent” will be Fox’s next live musical, the network announced on Friday.
Marc Platt, who earned an Emmy for producing last year’s “Grease: Live” for Fox, is behind the project and will executive produce the event with the estate of the musical’s late writer/composer, Jonathan Larson. Further details, including cast selections, will be announced later.
The deal was brokered by Paradigm and Carol Contes at the Guzman Law Group. Platt is also producing Fox’s live “A Christmas Story” musical, which was announced earlier on Friday and will air in December.
“We are so honored to partner with the estate of the brilliant Jonathan Larson and producer Marc Platt on one of the great musicals of our time,” said Fox Television Group chairman and CEOs Dana Walden and Gary Newman in a statement. “The title is so iconic, the music is so beloved and the themes are as meaningful today as they were when the show first premiered on Broadway. With Marc overseeing this project, we are sure it will have a profound impact on the legions of fans who know and love this musical.”
Larson died in January 1996, on the day of Rent’s first Off-Broadway preview. The musical, focused on artists living in the East Village and dealing with the AIDS epidemic, opened on Broadway later that year and went on to win a Pulitzer Prize and four Tonys, including best musical.
“‘Rent’ was Jonathan’s dream of sharing the theater and the passion he had for it with a whole new generation,” said Julie and Al Larson. “None of us could have imagined the massive impact that the messages and themes in ‘Rent’ would have on the theater community or the world…except for Jonathan. We are absolutely thrilled to be continuing Jonathan’s legacy and the still-relevant themes of the show in this way.”