The Lesser Known "Movies Turned to Broadway Shows" Phenomenon

At the end of April my mom (who just started reading this, Hi Mom!) and dad went to NYC with my Nana, my aunts and my uncle.  They were supposed to go in October, but that's when Sandy hit, thus postponing their trip.  So they went instead for my dad's birthday.  But I digress.  They went to NYC and they saw a bunch of shows.  One of the shows they saw was actually a musical based off a Disney movie musical of the same name, Newsies.  I LOVE that movie.  No seriously. It seems silly to say that I love a musical based on the 1899 Newsboys Strike (which is a real thing, BTW).  But I do.  The music is catchy, the dancing is awesome, the story makes you cry, and HELLO it's got a young Christian Bale in it, with a terribly awesome New York accent which sometimes slips into his original Welsh.  So I've introduced the movie to my family and everyone in my family knows it very well, if not loves it.  So of course my mom was very excited to see this show.  Unfortunately, it didn't live up to the movie.  They changed the story some and it lost some of the more important parts that take place.  But they brought me back the soundtrack and a newsboys cap (which I am looking forward to wearing sometime soon!).  The music is good, though different from what I know, which bothers me a wee bit. But overall it's pretty good!

What's my point?  Well my point is that this whole movie to musical thing has been happening a lot for quite sometime.  I mean mostly it's Disney, which started way back when with Beauty and the Beast (which btw, I ADORE the stage show.  Seriously I like it more than the movie), but it's started to grow more and more.  The Spiderman musical? I don't really know if it's based on the movies or the comics, but it didn't start getting talked about until after the Tobey Maguire Spidey movies started making it big. And there's been a Harry Potter musical (hilarious, FYI) and a Batman musical and I'm sure many many more.  Sometimes, the musicals work, like Lion King, or Beauty and the Beast.  Sometimes, not so much.  But even though I still prefer the movie over the musical, I recently watched a clip from backstage at opening night of Newsies, and the excitement and the talent of these actors and actresses could not be denied.  They're so lucky to do what they do, and even if the show sucks, they still got to be on Broadway and rock a show they loved.  That's awesome.  I want to do that.