The real Broadway may be closed indefinitely, but Netflix and Ryan Murphy are aiming to fill the void. The Prom, a Tony-nominated musical about four Broadway stars' mission to help a
high school girl bring her girlfriend to prom, is becoming a movie. Varietyfirst reported in April 2019 that Ryan Murphy would adapt the musical as part of his reportedly $300 million deal with Netflix.
But after amassing a star-studded cast, including Meryl Streep, Nicole Kidman, and Kerry Washington, production paused with mere days left on the shooting schedule. The Hollywood Reporterconfirmed in July that filming had resumed, making it one of the first productions to return amid pandemic safety concerns.
Ahead, everything we know about the upcoming release, including why Ariana Grande's role had to be recast and when The Prom is expected to hit your Netflix queue.
The movie is based on a Tony-nominated musical.
The Promwas nominated for six Tonys in 2019. It tells the story of Emma, a queer high school student who wants to bring her girlfriend to senior prom. However, the Indiana school's PTA bans her from doing so. This prompts struggling Broadway actors Barry Glickman and Dee Dee Allen, alongside their fellow performer friends Angie Dickinson and Trent Oliver, to step in. The foursome decides to launch a national campaign in Emma's honor, even traveling to Indiana for some much-needed publicity.
With music and lyrics written by Matthew Sklar and Chad Beguelin, the movie's screenplay will also be penned by book writers Beguelin and Bob Martin. Murphy will direct and produce, along with fellow producers Alexis Woodall, Bill Damaschke and Dori Berinstein.
Murphy has spoken about his personal connection to the project.
Although Murphy has more than 10 projects in development, including Ratched, American Horror Story season 10, and Pose season 3, The Prom is especially personal for the producer."I love the message of it. I really related to the protagonist," Murphy told Collider about the movie. "Emma is from Indiana and is not allowed to go to her prom because she’s gay. And I’m from Indiana and I wasn’t allowed to take a man or a male compadre to my prom. I related to it, so I believed in the message."
Murphy opened up to Varietyabout his unconventional prom experience. “I went with my best female friend, and as a protest I wore six-inch yellow platform boots as a tribute to Bananarama, so I got a little radical renegade-ness in,” he revealed. “But I was talking to the producer [Bill Damaschke] after the show, and I said, ‘I wish there had been something like this for me when I was that age so that I didn’t feel so alone.’”
Meryl Streep, Nicole Kidman, and Kerry Washington lead the star-studded cast.
The cast of The Prom is filled with Oscar winners, Broadway headliners, and top comedians. Deadline confirmed the first round of buzzy casting in June 2019, reporting that Meryl Streep will play Dee Dee Allen, a two-time Tony winning performer who teams up with her professional partner Barry Glickman to spotlight Emma's prom plight. Glickman will be played by James Corden. “It was, without question, the most joyful time of my working life,” Corden said on the Variety podcast The Big Ticket with Marc Malkin. “Any day you get to go to work with Meryl Streep is the best day of your life. That’s just a fact.”
Deadline also confirmed the casting of Nicole Kidman as Angie Dickinson and Andrew Rannells as Trent Oliver, the two actors who join Dee Dee and Barry in an effort to revive their own slagging careers. Awkwafina will play a publicist for the Broadway actors. Keegan-Michael Key plays Principal Hawkins, who is a supporter of Emma and love interest for Dee Dee. In October, Kerry Washington joined the cast in an unspecified role, per Deadline. Washington later confirmed on Variety's Big Ticket podcast that she'd play the head of PTA and concerned mother of student Alyssa.
Initially, Deadlinereported that Ariana Grande would play Alyssa, a popular girl whose mother is head of the PTA. The outlet also claimed Murphy and Grande would produce the movie's soundtrack alongside her manager, Scooter Braun. But by November, Grande was replaced by Broadway's Ariana DeBose, who will also play Anita in Steven Spielberg's upcoming West Side Story.
That same month, Deadline reported Jo Ellen Pelman (The Deuce) had secured the role of Emma following a national search. Other actors cast in supporting roles include Logan Riley Hassel, Sofia Deler, Nico Greetham, and Nathaniel J. Potvin.
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Murphy shared an official first look at the ensemble on Instagram in late August. "Meet the incredible icon-packed cast of Netflix's THE PROM. A group of true troopers who buckled up and finished shooting during COVID so we could give everybody an inspirational aspirational story that we all need right now." He teased the release date, adding, "Christmas is right around the corner..."
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There will be a new original song in the movie.
Broadway purists, fret not. During an interview with Collider, Murphy confirmed that all the musical's original tracks will be in the movie. He also announced the addition of a new original song. "We used all the songs and then we’ve written one new song for it, one new original piece for The Prom," Murphy revealed. "That was really fun to work on and it’s a great ballad, and it’s really a moving song about acceptance and prejudice. I think a lot of people will love it. Yeah, we kept every song and we added one, which is a lot, but it’s fun, worth it."
The Prom is poised for a Christmas 2020 release.
In mid-March, nearly every movie or TV show halted production in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. The Prom's filming stopped around March 12 with only a few days of production left. Murphy told Collider that Kidman, Streep, Corden, and Rannells had all completed filming prior to the shutdown. "The only thing that I had is I had two days of second unit pickup… I hope this summer I can go back and quickly pick them up," he told the outlet, adding, "The movie was supposed to come out right around Christmas, was the plan. November, Thanksgiving, Christmas in that window. Hopefully, I’ll be able to still do that."
As alluded to on Murphy's Instagram, The Prom is on track for its Christmas 2020 release. On July 22, The Hollywood Reporterconfirmed that more than four months after filming originally halted, The Prom would resume production for four consecutive days at Raleigh Studios in Hollywood. A source told the outlet, "Netflix is serious about the plan they put together and is using this as a test run fo their other productions."
Washington revealed on the Variety podcast The Big Ticket that she was scheduled to work half a day more on the project. But after voicing safety concerns, rewrites excluded her from filming. "I was scheduled to film and we did multiple phone calls about it with my physician because I had childhood asthma and my parents are both 80 and live in our guest house. So I have to be really, really careful," Washington explained. "But it just wound up that with rewrites, the scenes that I was going to complete, we didn’t need to do. I felt really good about the protocols, but it was going to be like literally a half a day, which I was like, 'Do we really need that moment?'"