‘Grease’ Musical to Air Live on Fox
“Grease” is the word for the Fox execs who were impressed by the ratings NBC’s live broadcast of The Sound of Music brought in last year. The network will broadcast the three-hour musical Grease sometime in 2015, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
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Grease, written by the Broadway team of Warren Casey and Jim Jacobs, first hit the Great White Way in 1971 and became a Hollywood hit, thanks to Olivia Newton-John and John Travolta, in 1978. The Fox production – dubbed Grease Live – will feature a young ensemble cast and cull from the original musical.
“From Broadway to film, and across generations, Grease is one of the most beloved musical stories ever told – and we can’t wait to bring it to our air in a spectacular live event,” Fox’s Senior Vice President of Event Series, Shana C. Waterman, said. “Its iconic characters and addictive songs make it the perfect fit for Fox, and we’re going to give it the kind of star power and production quality to make every Sandy, Danny, Rizzo and Kenickie out there want to get up and sing along.”
Fox previously aired songs from Grease on Glee. But it was NBC, which aired an 11-episode singing competition in 2007, Grease: You’re the One That I Want!, which cast the roles of Sandy Dumbrowski and Danny Zuko for the Broadway revival of the musical that year. By the time the show finished its run in March of that year, it had attracted over $9 million in ticket sales for the musical, which opened three months later, despite the fact that only about eight million people watched the final episode, according to New York Post.
NBC’s The Sound of Music Live attracted 22 million viewers, and has planned a live performance of Peter Pan to air on December 4th.