Will NBC Ease On Down the Road and Present The Wiz in 2015?
(© Robert J. Saferstein)
NBC has given itself a pair of choices as its 2015 live musical presentation: Meredith Willson's The Music Man or Charlie Smalls and William F. Brown's The Wiz. The news was announced by Bob Greenblatt, the head of NBC Entertainment, at the network's session in the Television Critics Association Press Tour.
The choice of The Music Man had been previously announced. NBC's licensing of The Wiz is a new development. One of the musicals will follow up 2014's broadcast of Peter Pan LIVE!, starring Allison Williams and Christopher Walken, and 2013's The Sound of Music LIVE!, starring Carrie Underwood.
The Wiz, an African-American take on L. Frank Baum's classic Wizard of Oz stories, opened on Broadway in 1975 and won seven Tonys including Best Musical and Best Score. A 1978 film version starred Diana Ross and Michael Jackson. It was last seen in New York in a New York City Center Encores! Summer Stars revival in 2009, with a cast led by Ashanti and Orlando Jones.
The Music Man premiered on Broadway in 1957 and won seven Tonys, including Best Musical (beating West Side Story). There have been two film versions, one in 1962 that was seen in movie theaters and starred Robert Preston and Shirley Jones, as well as a 2003 television adaptation led by Matthew Broderick and Kristin Chenoweth.
