Thank goodness for Mel Brooks continuing to work and thereby helping to regale us through These Trying Times. Last year the 93-year-old comedy director took a cuddly turn and voiced Melephant Brooks in Toy Story 4—and in 2020 he will bring Young Frankenstein Live! to ABC.
ABC announced the project during a Television Critics Association Winter Press Tour event on Wednesday, Deadline reports. Brooks’s oeuvre spans decades and includes several beloved classics, including Blazing Saddles and Spaceballs. But Young Frankenstein, which starred Gene Wilder as Dr. Frankenstein and Peter Boyle as the Monster, remains a career highlight despite being only Brooks’s fourth film when it debuted in 1974. The stage adaptation, for which Brooks composed the music, ran on Broadway from November of 2007 to January of 2009.
Neither the cast nor airdate has been revealed for ABC’s Young Frankenstein Live!, but the telecast will be based on the 2007 stage adaptation and include music from that production as well.
The death of the TV musical has been foretold for a couple years now, as networks continue to grapple with the difficulties and scheduling complications inherent to the format. Last year Fox’s Rent kicked the year off in January by bringing the format to a new ratings low—and just a week later, NBC scrapped its plans for a spring-scheduled Hair adaptation, itself a replacement for a much-delayed Bye Bye Birdie staging.
Things did improve later in the year, though. ABC’s The Little Mermaid Live! aired in November, and as the network reminded Deadline, it became the most-watched program of its kind on any network in almost four years—so maybe stories of the genre’s death have been greatly exaggerated. Again.
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