Silver Linings Playbook Is Becoming a Stage Musical, With Songs by A Great Big World

Excelsior — the word Pat Solitano repeats to himself like a prayer — is getting a melody. Producers announced on Tuesday, Oct 20, that Silver Linings Playbook is being developed as a stage musical, and the project moves fast from here: a private industry reading is scheduled for this Friday, Oct 23, according to People, Playbill and BroadwayWorld. Industry readings are theatre's version of a closed-door audition — no tickets, no reviews, just the material in front of the people who decide what gets built — and landing one means this adaptation is well past the "wouldn't it be nice" stage.

The announcement, reported Tuesday by People, Playbill and BroadwayWorld, fills in the full creative team and producing roster, and it is a serious one. This is not a jukebox cash-in on a beloved film title. It is an original score, a book writer with some of the biggest hits of the modern Broadway era, and a director coming off one of the most acclaimed musicals of the decade.

The team: pop hitmakers meet Broadway royalty

The original score comes from A Great Big World — Ian Axel and Chad King — the Grammy-winning duo behind "Say Something," their aching ballad with Christina Aguilera, and "This Is the New Year." If you were casting songwriters for a story about two bruised people talking themselves back into hope, you could do a lot worse than the pair who wrote pop's definitive song about almost giving up. Their catalogue leans earnest, piano-driven and emotionally direct, which is either a perfect match for this material or a very interesting tension with it. Probably both.

The book is by Rick Elice, a four-time Tony nominee whose credits include Jersey Boys, The Cher Show, Peter and the Starcatcher, Smash and Water for Elephants. Directing is Jessica Stone, a two-time Tony nominee for Kimberly Akimbo — a show that proved, nightly, that grief and comedy can share a stage without either one blinking. Stone and Elice have worked together before, on Water for Elephants, so the book writer and director arrive as a tested pairing rather than a first date.

Lead producers are James D. Stern and Oren Michels, with Tom Viertel as executive producer and Bespoke Theatricals as general manager, per the announcement reported by Playbill and BroadwayWorld.

Why this story, and why it might actually work on stage

The musical is based on Matthew Quick's 2008 bestselling debut novel and on David O. Russell's 2012 film adaptation. The story, as People and Playbill summarize it: Pat Solitano — Pat Peoples in the novel — comes home after a stay in a mental-health facility, determined to win back his estranged wife, and instead finds an unexpected partner in Tiffany Maxwell, a young widow who recruits him for a dance competition. Yes, there is already a dance competition at the climax. The source material was, in a sense, waiting for somebody to add songs.

The film's pedigree is the kind producers dream about and actors fear being compared to. Starring Jennifer Lawrence, Bradley Cooper, Robert De Niro and Jacki Weaver, it grossed over $200M worldwide and earned eight Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture. It was the first film in over 30 years to be nominated in all four acting categories, and Lawrence won the Best Actress Oscar for playing Tiffany. Any stage Pat and Tiffany will be measured against two of the most loved screen performances of the 2010s — which is presumably why the reading is private, and why no casting for it has been announced.

A long road from page and screen to stage

This adaptation has been in the works for a while: the project was first revealed in 2021, according to the reports, which makes Friday's reading the product of roughly five years of development. That is a normal timeline for a new musical, if there is such a thing as normal — and it cuts both ways. Long development can mean a show that has been carefully shaped; it can also mean a show still searching for its shape. The reading is where the industry starts to find out which one this is.

What happens next depends entirely on Friday. A reading that lands can lead to workshops, an out-of-town premiere and eventually a Broadway or touring production; a reading that doesn't tends to be followed by quiet rewrites. For now, there are no production dates and no venue, and anyone telling you otherwise is guessing. What is real is the team, the date, and the fact that one of the most quotable films of the last fifteen years is about to be sung in a room full of people deciding its future.

For readers who have never heard the term: an industry reading is a working session, not a performance. Actors stand at music stands with scripts in hand, a pianist or small band plays the score, and there are no sets, no costumes and no choreography to hide behind — the writing has to do all of the work. Producers, investors and theatre owners attend precisely because the format is unforgiving: if a song stops the room cold at a music stand, it will stop the room in a full production, and if a scene dies on Friday afternoon, no amount of staging was ever going to save it. Readings are also where running times, second-act problems and miscast roles announce themselves cheaply, before real money is spent. That a project first revealed in 2021 has reached this stage — with casting still unannounced and the room closed to the press — means Friday is less a premiere than an examination, and the creative team's credits suggest they know exactly what is being examined.

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