By Michael Paulson, nytimes.com
Michael Jackson is Broadway-bound.
The pop singer’s estate, along with Columbia Live Stage, said Tuesday that it had agreed to develop a stage musical about his life, aiming for Broadway in 2020.
The musical, reflecting Jackson’s stature, features an unusually acclaimed creative team. The book is to be written by Lynn Nottage, a playwright who has won two Pulitzers, for “Ruined” and “Sweat.” And the show is to be directed and choreographed by Christopher Wheeldon, the artistic associate of the Royal Ballet in London, who won a Tony Award for “An American in Paris.”
Jackson has been the subject of many previous entertainment ventures, including a staged concert, “Thriller Live” that has been running for nearly a decade in London. The estate’s executors have collaborated with several projects, including “Michael Jackson ONE,” a Cirque du Soleil show running for the last five years in Las Vegas; a documentary, “Michael Jackson’s This Is It,” released a few months after his death in 2009; and “Michael Jackson’s Journey From Motown to Off the Wall,” a Spike Lee documentary from 2016.
