Michael Jackson Musical on Broadway for 2020

The Estate of Michael Jackson just announced that a brand new musical will come to life by 2020! The musical has not be named yet but will be all about Michael Jackson. Here the statement from the Estate:

The Estate of Michael Jackson has partnered with Columbia Live Stage to develop a Michael Jackson stage musical which is expected to open on Broadway in 2020. The musical, which doesn’t yet have a title, will be written by Lynn Nottage – who is a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, and directed by Christopher Wheeldon, a Tony Award winner. And, of course, the music will be all Michael Jackson! More to come!

Who is Lynn Nottage:
Lynn Nottage is a Pulitzer Prize winning playwright and a screenwriter. Her plays have been produced widely in the United States and throughout the world. Sweat (Pulitzer Prize, Obie Award, Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, Tony Nomination, Drama Desk Nomination) moved to Broadway after a sold out run at The Public Theater. It premiered and was commissioned by Oregon Shakespeare Festival American Revolutions History Cycle/Arena Stage. Other plays include By The Way, Meet Vera Stark (Lilly Award, Drama Desk Nomination), Ruined (Pulitzer Prize, OBIE, Lucille Lortel, New York Drama Critics’ Circle, Audelco, Drama Desk, and Outer Critics Circle Award), Intimate Apparel (American Theatre Critics and New York Drama Critics’ Circle Awards for Best Play), Fabulation, or The Re-Education of Undine (OBIE Award), Crumbs from the Table of Joy, Las Meninas, Mud, River, Stone, Por’knockers and POOF!. Her most recent play, Mlima’s Tale, premiered at the Public Theater in May 2018. She developed This is Reading, a performance installation based on two years of interviews, at the Franklin Street, Reading Railroad Station in Reading, PA in July 2017. She is working with composer Ricky Ian Gordon on adapting her play Intimate Apparel into an opera, commissioned by The Met/LCT. She is currently an artist-in-residence at the Park Avenue Armory.

She is the co-founder of the production company, Market Road Films, whose most recent projects include The Notorious Mr. Bout directed by Tony Gerber and Maxim Pozdorovkin (Premiere/Sundance 2014), First to Fall directed by Rachel Beth Anderson (Premiere/ IDFA, 2013) and Remote Control (Premiere/Busan 2013- New Currents Award). Over the years, she has developed original projects for HBO, Sidney Kimmel Entertainment, Showtime, This is That and Harpo. She is writer/producer on the Netflix series She’s Gotta Have It, directed by Spike Lee.

Nottage is the recipient of a MacArthur “Genius Grant” Fellowship, Steinberg “Mimi” Distinguished Playwright Award,PEN/Laura Pels Master Playwright Award, Merit and Literature Award from The Academy of Arts and Letters, Columbia University Provost Grant, Doris Duke Artist Award, The Joyce Foundation Commission Project & Grant, Madge Evans-Sidney Kingsley Award, Nelson A. Rockefeller Award for Creativity, The Dramatists Guild Hull-Warriner Award, the inaugural Horton Foote Prize,Helen Hayes Award, the Lee Reynolds Award, and the Jewish World Watch iWitness Award. Her other honors include the National Black Theatre Fest’s August Wilson Playwriting Award, a Guggenheim Grant, Lucille Lortel Fellowship and Visiting Research Fellowship at Princeton University. She is a graduate of Brown University and the Yale School of Drama. She is also an Associate Professor in the Theatre Department at Columbia School of the Arts.

Nottage is a board member for BRIC Arts Media Bklyn, Donor Direct Action, Dramatist Play Service, Second Stage and the Dramatists Guild. She recently completed a three-year term as an Artist Trustee on the Board of the Sundance Institute. She is member of the The Dramatists Guild and WGAE

Who is Christopher Wheeldon:
English choreographer Christopher Wheeldon is Artistic Associate of The Royal Ballet. He trained at The Royal Ballet School and danced with the Company 1991–3. For The Royal Ballet he has choreographed Tryst, DGV: Danse à grande vitesse, Electric Counterpoint, ‘Trespass’ (Metamorphosis: Titian 2012, in collaboration with Alastair Marriott) , Aeternum (Olivier Award for Best New Dance Production) and Strapless, and the three-act ballets Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, The Winter’s Tale and Corybantic Games. Works of his performed by The Royal Ballet and originally created for other companies include After the Rain and Within the Golden Hour.

Wheeldon was born in Yeovil and trained at The Royal Ballet School. In 1991 he won gold medal at the Prix de Lausanne with a solo of his own creation and that year entered The Royal Ballet, where Kenneth MacMillan encouraged him in his choreographic work. In 1993 Wheeldon joined New York City Ballet, promoted to soloist in 1998. He created his first work for NYCB, Slavonic Dances, in 1997 and became the company’s first Resident Choreographer in 2001. Works for NYCB include Polyphonia (London Critics’ Circle Award and Olivier Award for Best New Dance Production) and The Nightingale and the Rose.

Wheeldon regularly choreographs for leading international companies, including Boston Ballet, San Francisco Ballet, Dutch National Ballet and Joffrey Ballet. In 2007 he founded Morphoses/The Wheeldon Company and became the first British choreographer to create a new work for the Bolshoi Ballet. In 2012 he collaborated with Marriott on the closing ceremony of the London Olympic Games. His awards include the Tony Award for Best Choreography (An American in Paris). He was made an OBE in 2016, and that year was artistic director for Les Arts Décoratifs’ Fashion Forward exhibition.

The position of Artistic Associate of The Royal Ballet is generously supported by Kenneth and Susan Green.

Columbia Live Stage:
Colombia Live Stage is a division of Sony Pictures Entertainment.
Longtime Sony executive Lia Vollack has been named president of Columbia Live Stage, the new live theatrical productions division of Sony.
They have only produced so far 3 musicals:

Shuffle Along (Broadway)
Groundhog Day (Broadway)
Between the Lines (Broadway)

SOURCE: The Michael Jackson Estate™ / Lynn Nottage / Christopher Wheeldon