We May Soon Have the Time of Our Lives on Broadway

No one puts Baby in a corner—but they're about to try to put her on Broadway. Variety reports that Lionsgate is adapting Dirty Dancing for the stage, with "aspirations" for a Great White Way showing sometime after its debut in late 2025. Dirty Dancing: The Musical has tapped Eleanor Bergstein, who wrote the screenplay for the 1987 film starring Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey, to develop the production and write the show's script. Meanwhile, Tony Award nominee Lonny Price, who played the smarmy Neil Kellerman in the original movie, is set to direct. The musical will offer a "deeper, more nuanced version of the characters they fell in love with [in the film]," Price says.

It's not the first time Dirty Dancing has gotten the stage treatment. Playbill notes that it first saw a theatrical run in Australia in 2004—Bergstein wrote that script—followed by a five-year run in London starting in 2006, followed by two revivals. "Broadway has proved more elusive," however, though a "North American mini-tour, publicized as 'pre-Broadway,' was launched in 2006," the theater publication notes, adding that a full North American tour unfolded in 2014. This might not be the last we see of the Kellerman's crew, either: Variety notes that a direct sequel to the movie, with Grey reprising her role as Baby, has been in the works since 2020. (More Dirty Dancing stories.)