Scott Wittman Latest Celebrity News & Gossip

Jon Burlingame editorThe number and range of superstars vying for Emmys this year – everyone from Kanye West and 50 Cent to Mick Jagger and Imagine Dragons – is staggering.More than 600 entries in the seven Emmy music categories were unveiled today as voting began for the nominations round. Nominations will be announced by the Television Academy on July 12.The most star-studded category is that of best song (technically, “original music and lyrics”).

Jennifer Hudson, who guest starred on NBC’s Smash, is now joining the producing team of its upcoming stage musical adaptation.

Anna Tingley If you purchase an independently reviewed product or service through a link on our website, Variety may receive an affiliate commission. Selena Gomez, Steve Martin and Martin Short are ready to solve their biggest crime yet. “Only Murders in the Building” returns to Hulu on Tuesday, Aug.

Brent Lang Executive Editor As Matthew López prepared for the London debut of “The Inheritance,” his epic drama about the AIDS epidemic and its painful aftershocks, he was simultaneously outlining a first draft of “Some Like It Hot,” an effervescent re-imagining of the classic Billy Wilder film. The two shows could not have been more radically different. But López enjoyed toggling between comedy and tragedy. “I like working in extremes,” he says. “I like working in different modes.” Plus, he thinks that both productions benefitted from their author’s double act. “I got to live in both worlds at once,” López argues. “One helped the other. Doing the shows at the same time kept both projects in check. It prevented ‘The Inheritance’ from getting too dour and kept ‘Some Like It Hot’ from getting too lightweight. It brought some gravity to ‘Some Like It Hot’ and some levity to ‘The Inheritance.'”

Marc Malkin Senior Film Awards, Events & Lifestyle Editor Is there going be a musical episode of “Only Murders in the Building” in Season 3?! While it hasn’t been officially confirmed that Steve Martin, Martin Short and Selena Gomez will be singing and dancing at some point, I recently got a tease from musical impresarios Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman. “We’ve worked on the next season of ‘Only Murders in the Building,’” Shaiman said. “We’re not allowed to say anything more than that, but you could probably do that math.” The third season also includes appearances by Meryl Streep, Paul Rudd and Jesse Williams.

Marc Malkin Senior Film Awards, Events & Lifestyle Editor The excitement and buzz continues to build for “The Little Mermaid.” A source tells me that director Rob Marshall and husband, producer John DeLuca, hosted a private screening of Disney’s live adaptation of the 1989 animated classic on Sunday night at New York’s Whitby Hotel. The guest list of about 80 people included Emily Blunt and John Krasinski, Matt Damon and his family, Emily Mortimer, Ben Platt and his “Parade” co-star Micaela Diamond, Marc Shaiman, Scott Wittman, Bob Balaban and Lynn Grossman, Diane and Brian Sutherland, and Scott Ellis. The film’s composer Alan Menken and Lin-Manuel Miranda, who co-wrote three new songs for the movie, were also there.

Smash? The that ran for two seasons on from 2012-2013? Well, the beloved show has joined the list of canceled TV projects getting a revival—except this one won't be on the small screen. According to , Smash producers Robert Greenblatt, Neil Meron, and will bring a musical adaptation of the television series to Broadway.

Smash is finally heading to Broadway.

The stage musical adaptation of NBC’s Smash is “alive and kicking,” says producer Neil Meron, and he and composer Marc Shaiman have the photos to prove it.

John Waters‘s lovable 1988 indie film about a big girl with big dreams in ’60s-era Baltimore danced its way to wild success on Broadway, courtesy of the savvy, perfectly realized musical adaptation by Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman.The life and creative partners won the 2003 Tony Award for Best Original Score, just one of eight total trophies racked up by the heart-warming Hairspray, including the top trophy as Best Musical and wins for the show’s director Jack O’Brien, book writers Mark O’Donnell and Thomas Meehan, and three members of the original cast, led by Harvey Fierstein, who donned drag to play the show’s leading matriarch Edna Turnblad.“There was no gay agenda behind Edna being played by a man,” Shaiman told Metro Weekly in 2005. “First of all, it’s just there because that’s the way it was in the movie.

Some Like It Hot, the stage musical adaptation of the classic 1959 Billy Wilder film comedy, will make it to Broadway next fall, following a couple pandemic-bedeviled years that saw the cancelation of a once-planned 2021 pre-New York engagement in Chicago.

It’s been almost two years since a Broadway musical based on the TV series Smash was announced and we finally have an update on the show’s progress!

Sasha Urban editor“Broadway, Here I Come!” said the musical adaptation of the late NBC show “Smash,” which Variety can exclusively reveal is planning a workshop for the summer, according to producer Robert Greenblatt.The musical was first confirmed to be in the works in May of 2020, with Tony winner Bob Martin (“The Prom”) and Tony-nominated Rick Elice (“Peter and the Starcatcher”) writing the book. Greenblatt is aiming for a Broadway opening in 2023, with the show being titled either “Smash, A New Musical” or “Smash: The Musical.”“They’ve delivered a draft that I’m very excited about, and we’re now in the process of putting together our first workshop, which is, you know, the earliest step in a musical where you just get a cast together, read the script and perform the score just for the producers,” Greenblatt told Variety.

Brent Lang Executive Editor of Film and MediaAmber Ruffin is partnering with Matthew López to adapt film classic “Some Like It Hot” for the stage. The new stage adaptation will also feature music by Marc Shaiman and lyrics by Scott Wittman, the team behind “Hairspray,” as well as direction and choreography by Casey Nicholaw, who previously guided “The Book of Mormon” to box office riches.

Finally, the future of “Smash”

Talk about meta.

By Greg Evans

In the seven years since it's been off the air, Smash has gone on to become a cult fan favorite of Broadway fans — so much so that on Wednesday (May 20), the cast of the NBC series is reuniting for a special live stream of their 2015 one-night-only show Bombshell in Concert to help raise money for the Actors Fund.Part of what makes Smash such a cultural phenomenon is the fictional musical at its center, Bombshell.

There were two musicals that were made within the NBC series Smash and Katharine McPhee‘s character Karen Cartwright was part of both of them – Bombshell and Hit List!

Some Like It Hot is headed straight to Broadway in 2021!

A new musical based on the classic film “Some Like It Hot” will premiere on Broadway in the fall of 2021.

By Brent Lang

By Greg Evans