Weinsteins Plan Film Version of Pippin With Rob Marshall
(Photo © Michael Portantiere)
Film producer Harvey Weinstein and his brother/business partner Bob Weinstein are developing a film version of the Stephen Schwartz-Roger O. Hirson musical Pippin with director-choreographer Rob Marshall.
“We do what we love,” Harvey Weinstein told journalist Lynn Hirschberg at The New York Times “Sunday With The Magazine” event this past weekend. “We never ask how a film can be marketed. Do we like it? There are no other factors. I am a fan of musicals.”
Marshall directed the 2002 movie version of Chicago for the Weinsteins. The film won six Academy Awards, including Best Picture, and Marshall was nominated for Best Director. Most recently, Marshall directed the film Memoirs of a Geisha. He is also a six-time Tony Award nominee for choreography and direction of such shows as Cabaret, She Loves Me, and Little Me.
Pippin opened on Broadway on October 23, 1972 and closed on June 12, 1977. The show was directed and choreographed by Bob Fosse, and the original cast was headed by Ben Vereen, John Rubinstein, Irene Ryan, Jill Clayburgh, and Leland Palmer. A 1981 tape of a performance of a touring production is available on DVD, starring Vereen, William Katt, Martha Raye, Leslie Denniston, and Chita Rivera. The show is due to be produced at the Goodspeed Opera House in July, and that production is planned to tour thereafter.
