Summary:
Mumbai, Oct 23 (PTI) It was in 1995 when Aditya Chopra presented the love story of Raj and Simran, and now 26 years later, the tale is set to be chronicled as a Broadway musical.Chopra on Saturday announced that he will make his Broadway debut as a director with the musical version of the classic romance movie.The filmmaker is "terribly nervous and incredibly excited" about the Broadway musical and he feels "23 again (the same age I was when I directed DDLJ)". "I’m a hardcore cinema guy, I have never done theatre in my life and here I am trying to pull off the craziest ambition of my life," he said in a note shared with the media.Backed by Yash Raj Films, "DDLJ", as it came to be known by, is considered one of the landmark films in Indian cinema.The romance drama, which released on October 20, 1995, propelled its lead stars Shah Rukh Khan and Kajol to stardom and made them one of the most loved onscreen pairs.Titled "Come…Fall In Love.
The DDLJ - Musical", the Broadway show will be produced by Chopra"s Yash Raj Films.Based on an original story by Chopra, the musical will feature book and lyrics by Laurence Olivier Award-winner Nell Benjamin of "Legally Blonde" and "Mean Girls" fame.Music director duo Vishal Dadlani and Shekhar Ravjiani will serve as composers, while Tony and Emmy winner Rob Ashford will choreograph with associate choreographer Shruti Merchant.Tony winner Derek McLane, who earlier worked on musicals like "Moulin Rouge!", "Hairspray Live!" and "33 Variations", will design the set with music supervision by Bill Sherman.
Adam Zotovich will executive produce the Broadway musical."Come…Fall In Love.
The DDLJ - Musical" will be on stage in the Broadway season of 2022-2023, with a world premiere at the Old Globe Theatre in San Diego September 2022. A global casting search begins shortly headed by Duncan Stewart of Stewart/Whitley casting and Yash Raj Films casting head Shanoo Sharma.In his note, Chopra recalled his earliest memory of attending a Broadway show back in 1985 when his filmmaker father Yash Chopra took him and his brother Uday Chopra to their "first musical theatre experience"."The lights dimmed, the curtains lifted and what unfolded in the next 3 hours left me speechless and stunned.
Now, till then, I was a kid who was an avid movie watcher and what I loved the most was big screen Indian blockbusters. "But that day what I saw on stage blew my mind.
I couldn’t believe that this kind of spectacle could be created live on stage," he said.Chopra said what resonated with him was the fact that the musical theatre was so similar to Indian films. "It was just not the fact that both use songs to tell the story, it was much more than that, it was the feeling they evoked which was exactly the same.