K.T Simpson
Neil Peron, producer of NBC’s short-lived Smash, has been developing a stage version of the dance drama (the series, popular among theater-folk for it’s authentic depiction of staging a musical, was axed after just one season) that starred Debra Messing, Jack Davenport, and Katharine McPhee.
“‘Smash’ has been on a positive path since we did a reading in May,” Meron tells Variety of the adaptation. “Should (our latest stage show) ‘Some Like It Hot’ be the success we want it to be, it might add another dimension to making the musical happen.”
Christian Borle, who stars in Peron’s current stage offering ‘Some Like it Hot’, and also starred in NBC’s “Smash”, believes a TV return also wouldn’t be off the cards.
“Part of me really hopes there’s enough weird nostalgia for ‘Smash,’ along with a more niche market for television, that there’s a moment where ‘Smash’ comes back… Because we were doing network television, it couldn’t be about the nut and bolts of doing theater, but, with streaming, we could tell the real story.”
Borle adds, “We could all sit around, ‘A Chorus Line’-style, and tell it like is. We wouldn’t have to make up a thing.”
