‘Oh, the Places You'll Go!' Dr. Seuss Adaptation From ‘Wicked' Director Jon M. Chu Gets 2028 Release
'Oh, the Places You'll Go!' now has a release date.
The animated feature, directed by 'Wicked' filmmaker Jon M. Chu and Jill Culton, has been given a March 17, 2028, release date in traditional theaters and Imax. J.J. Abrams and Gregg Taylor are producing the project, from Abrams' Bad Robot, Warner Bros. Pictures Animation and Dr. Seuss Enterprises.
Rob Lieber wrote the screenplay for the movie based on Dr. Seuss' final book, which was published Jan. 22, 1990, and has been a graduation gift mainstay ever since.
EGOT winners Benj Pasek and Justin Paul have written new songs for the movie. Pasek and Paul, as they are known, wrote the songs for 'La La Land,' 'The Greatest Showman' and 'Spirited,' and have songs in Disney's live-action adaptation of 'Snow White' and the upcoming Pharrell project 'Golden' (formerly 'Atlantis').
'Oh, The Places You'll Go!' marks Chu's first animated feature — although there was a healthy amount of visual effects in 'Wicked,' enough for it to nab a best visual effects Oscar nomination. Culton is a seasoned animation vet. She last wrote and directed 'Abominable' for DreamWorks Animation and was a story artist on 'Toy Story,' eventually working on 'A Bug's Life,' 'Toy Story 2,' 'Shrek,' 'Monsters, Inc.' and many more.
Other animated movies based on Seuss' work include 'The Grinch,' 'The Lorax' and 'Horton Hears a Who.'
Chu's 'Wicked: For Good,' comes out this Thanksgiving.
The post 'Oh, the Places You'll Go!' Dr. Seuss Adaptation From 'Wicked' Director Jon M. Chu Gets 2028 Release appeared first on TheWrap.
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Associated Press
8 minutes ago
- Associated Press
Tony Awards draw best audience in 6 years for CBS
NEW YORK (AP) — The Tony Awards on Sunday lured 4.85 million viewers to CBS, its largest broadcast audience in six years, according to Nielsen's data. CBS said Monday the telecast — hosted by 'Wicked' star Cynthia Erivo — scored a 38% increase over last year's 3.53 million viewers. That's the largest audience for the Tonys since 2019, when the telecast that year nabbed 5.4 million viewers and ' Hadestown ' was crowned best new musical. The latest version also had to compete with the second game of the NBA Finals, between the Thunder and Pacers, CBS also said the awards show drew its largest ever streaming audience on Paramount+ but did not disclose streaming viewership numbers, only saying it was up 208% from last year. 'Maybe Happy Ending,' a rom-com about androids that crackles with humanity won best new musical on a night when Kara Young made history as the first Black person to win two Tonys consecutively for 'Purpose,' which also won best new play. Interest in the Tonys may also have been fueled by the competition in the best lead actress in a musical category, with Audra McDonald gunning for her record-setting seventh Tony and Nicole Scherzinger of 'Sunset Blvd.' hoping to be crowned a legitimate Broadway diva after a career in the pop group Pussycat Dolls and as a TV talent show judge. Other Hollywood names included in the telecast included George Clooney making his Broadway debut and 'Succession' star Sarah Snook being named best leading actress in a play for 'The Picture of Dorian Gray,' a one-woman show.
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
"Oh, Mary!" star Cole Escola manifested their Tony win the old-fashioned way
It seems to happen less and less, but every so often, the stars still align. The puzzle pieces of the universe fit perfectly together. A witch's dusty spellbook — trapped in the highest tower of the oldest castle — flies open all on its own, turning its pages to an old incantation said to make everything okay again, if only for a few moments. With that, the die is cast, destiny is in motion and Mary Todd Lincoln gets her long-awaited Tony for her cabaret prowess. Or, rather, her second Tony, as 'Oh, Mary!' scribe and star Cole Escola so studiously noted as they accepted their Tony for best actor in a play at Sunday's Tony Awards ceremony. 'Julie Harris has a Tony for playing Mary Todd Lincoln,' Escola said as they started their speech, paying reverence to the stage legend's 1972 play, 'The Last of Mrs. Lincoln.' But in Escola's relatively short time in their first starring role on Broadway, they've become something of a legend themself. 'Oh, Mary!' is Escola's debut on Broadway proper, after a throng of smaller (though no less hysterical) off-Broadway and independent cabaret and solo shows, and the play was a hit within minutes of its first preview's curtain-raise in January 2024. The show imagines Mary Todd Lincoln as a hard-drinking, boisterous, wannabe cabaret star, beleaguered by her marriage to what Escola imagines is an obviously gay president. It's not so much laugh-a-minute as it is laugh-a-second. When I saw the play during its initial off-Broadway run at Manhattan's Lucille Lortel Theater in March 2024, the sold-out house practically shook with thunderous applause during the cast's final bows. 'Oh, Mary!' is the kind of instant sensation that's all too rare these days, one so undeniable it immediately breaks through the crowd of theater savants to a wider audience of curious patrons. To longtime fans of Escola's like myself, the show's smash success is more of a reason to shed a tear than it is any surprise. Escola's work has always been blissfully weird yet totally charming, hyper-confident in its discerning peculiarity. And 'Oh, Mary!' is their long-gestating, brilliant brainchild, shepherded from an email Escola sent to themselves in 2009 all the way to the Tonys stage. It's a theater of the politically absurd when every day of our waking lives is a theater of the politically absurd. But the convergence of Escola's talents and our national nightmares wasn't some stroke of luck. Escola didn't catch up to the culture; the culture caught up to them. Their win and ongoing success are fate manifested, a testament to the power of hard work and uncompromising vision. Sometimes, the right things still happen. If you haven't yet had the chance to see 'Oh, Mary!' live, Escola succinctly describes the play in that 2009 email they sent themselves, as retold in their recent interview with 'CBS Sunday Morning.' 'What if Abraham Lincoln's assassination wasn't such a bad thing for Mary Todd?' the email read. But as Escola tells it, this kernel of a larger concept was too precious to let go of back then. 'I loved this idea so much, I didn't want it to get on paper and for it to disappoint me,' Escola said in the interview. 'To disappoint me, not just the audience, but me. There are certain ideas that you're just like, 'Oh, I don't want to plant this seed, because what if it's an ugly flower?'" The fear is understandable, given the number of things that could go wrong in the process of turning one simple idea into a fully mounted Broadway production. But Escola has never been afraid of a little ugliness or a little grit. Their willingness to embrace the flawed, strange parts of life has long been part of their unique allure. Take something like 'Pee Pee Manor,' their 17-minute 'unaired television pilot that was too awful to air,' about a woman who moves into a cursed piece of broken-down real estate, posted directly to Escola's YouTube channel. Like all of Escola's work, it's outrageous and unforgettable, showcasing a flair for character work unlike anyone else. Escola is preternaturally gifted when it comes to picking up on people's eccentricities and molding them into a beautifully Frankensteined creation. When Donna, the short's bouffant-styled main character, says her first line — 'So eventually I just took the thing down, I said, 'I'm sick of feedin' humming birds, they oughta feed me for once!' — the viewer knows exactly who this woman is and what she's all about. She's our mother, our grandmother, our wacky aunt and the woman striking up a conversation with us in the checkout line at Kohl' same goes for Escola's version of Mary Todd, who arrived fully formed by the time her loafers hit the stage of the Lucille Lortel for the first time. Mary is a whiskey-smuggling alcoholic and man-eating cabaret amateur, so dead bored in her marriage that she wishes her husband were dead himself. She yells, stomps her feet and raises her hoop skirt and petticoat to scandalous heights. Meanwhile, Abraham (Conrad Ricamora) has a pesky Civil War to deal with, so he leaves Mary in the care of her chaperone (Bianca Leigh) and teacher (James Scully). She loathes the former and lusts after the latter, and her heightened emotions and cabaret dreams swell to a magnificent, hysterical crescendo unlike Broadway has ever seen. In a way, 'Oh, Mary!' is the anti-'Hamilton.' It's not concerned with America's founding principles but rather with the country's spectacle. This is the way things have always been, which is to say: totally bananas. It's no wonder the play hit when America's political atmosphere feels its most ridiculous. It is a uniquely strange feeling to watch Escola's success reach new, deserved heights as America falls off the deep end. I've been devouring Escola's work for well over a decade, since I discovered the videos they were making online in the late 2000s, alongside their best friend, Jeffery Self. As scrappy, floppy-haired creators in YouTube's nascent days, Self and Escola made short, terribly smart and timely videos under the moniker VGL Gay Boys. ('Very Good Looking,' as the acronym stands.) The videos' modest success among the gay community landed the two a short-lived sketch show on Logo, 'Jeffery and Cole Casserole.' Think of it like a proof-of-concept for something like 'Broad City,' another show about two New York millennials that similarly went from web series to television — only 'Jeffrey and Cole Casserole' had a much shorter lifespan. Things were far more hopeful back then. How could they not be? Barack Obama was pulling ahead in polling, and the cultural tides were starting to turn in favor of the late aughts' flavor of liberalism. Don't Ask Don't Tell was on its way out and gay marriage was on the horizon! A new artist by the name of Lady Gaga was bursting onto the scene! 'The Dark Knight' was making superhero movies cool again! It was a formative time for the newly out-of-the-closet, 14-year-old me, who recognized my sick and stupid sense of humor in Escola and Self's videos. Perhaps my favorite of them all was a video called 'VGL Gay Boys with Bernadette Peters,' the first selection of what would become an ongoing, go-to impression for Escola, who donned a curly, red wig and squeaky voice to parody the Broadway legend. The premise of the video is simple: Self and Escola were going to record a video review of the 2008 comedy 'Get Smart,' but Escola insists on playing Bernadette Peters for the day. Unwilling to break character, Escola's version of Peters has not seen the movie, so instead, the pair reviews 'Home Alone 2,' which Peters can't recall a single frame of either. The video is barely two minutes long, yet incessantly quotable, which any friend of mine for the last 17 years has learned at one point or another when they've been subjected to watching it. Seeing Escola on the Tonys red carpet, I couldn't help but recall that video for the billionth time. Escola did, after all, show up to the ceremony in Bernadette Peters drag, now polished and elevated thanks to all of that Broadway box office record-shattering. Escola sported a curly updo and a gown that was an homage to the costume Peters wore accepting her Tony in 1999 for 'Annie Get Your Gun.' Seeing Escola on that stage accepting their first Tony while honoring one of their formative inspirations, it struck me that this is the kind of heartening, full-circle moment we rarely witness. Is that not the American dream, being born into one life or socioeconomic status and forging your way into whatever your picture of success looks like? Escola went from recording videos on a webcam to accepting the Tony for best actor; from imitating a legend to becoming one in their own right. But for Escola, it seemed almost predestined, spoken into the universe so frequently it had to become true. Calling it a picture of the American dream would be reductive, diminishing all of the work that Escola has done to apply it to an outmoded path toward prosperity. 'Oh, Mary!' might be a distinctly American show, but this is Escola's dream, first and foremost, and it was going to come to fruition no matter what. In that VGL Gay Boys 'Get Smart' review video, Escola's version of Bernadette Peters tells Self, 'I haven't seen any movie since 1999.' When Self asks why that year specifically, Escola replies, 'That's the year I won my Tony.' And at the mic, Tony in hand and dressed as Peters was in 1999, Escola took a moment to bring it back to where it all began. 'To the most important people in my life, my friends, who are here tonight,' Escola said, before shouting out Self at the top of the list. And there in the audience was Self, shedding a tear for his friend, watching their dream come true.
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
Tony Talk: Dissecting those shocking wins for ‘Purpose,' Nicole Scherzinger, Darren Criss, and more
Welcome to Tony Talk, a column in which Gold Derby contributors Sam Eckmann and David Buchanan offer Tony Awards analysis. Mere hours after the 2025 Tonys, we reconvene to dissect the shocking wins, highlight our favorite victors, and discuss the musical performances. David Buchanan: After a truly sensational Broadway season, last night's Tony Awards didn't disappoint with some surprises, did it? If folks have been reading our weekly column, they probably did pretty well with their predictions and would've seen some of these upsets coming — I shockingly tied for first place worldwide! — but there were still some wins that were hard to call correctly in the moment but were predictable in hindsight. One of those categories was Best Play. We knew that this would be a squeaker between frontrunner Oh, Mary! and challengers Purpose and John Proctor Is the Villain, but very few Gold Derby users correctly called the win for the Pulitzer victor. Do you think the fact that voters recognized performer and playwright Cole Escola with a Best Actor win led them to go with the drama with more gravitas for the top prize? More from GoldDerby Behind the scenes at the Tony Awards: From Darren Criss to Andrew Lloyd Weber, backstage at Broadway's biggest night 'Legend of Zelda' movie delayed, Snoop Dogg biopic cast, and more of today's top stories Minha Kim 'confronted all new emotions that I had never anticipated' in Season 2 of 'Pachinko' Sam Eckmann: Congratulations on your top score! There were so many insanely close races last night, so picking the correct choice in each coin toss was tough. Part of the victory for Purpose came down to the strength of the entire Best Play field. Voters were fans of all of these plays, so a full sweep for Oh, Mary! wasn't in the cards. The classic trope of wanting to reward a script that feels 'important' helped push Purpose over the edge in the top race. Playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins is also the 'it' writer of the moment in New York. Couple these points with the fact that Escola has a guaranteed win in Lead Actor, and it does make sense that a different production squeaked past Mary Todd Lincoln in the top race. Speaking of performers, I'm kicking myself for dropping Darren Criss at the last minute for Jonathan Groff in Lead Actor in a Musical. Clearly voters were head over heels for Maybe Happy Ending. Is it safe to say the overall enthusiasm for that musical is what tipped the scales for Criss? SEE 'Every beat is meticulously crafted': An oral history of the Pulitzer Prize- and Tony-winning play 'Purpose' Buchanan: I think so! In such an incredibly strong season for new musicals, it was not a guarantee that Maybe Happy Ending would sweep the pivotal categories of Director, Book, and Score on its way to its likely Best Musical victory. But once it started cleaning up during the ceremony, it would have been shocking if Criss — the sole acting nominee and thus the face of the show – ultimately lost. We both predicted Criss all season long, but The New York Times Tony voter survey led many folks astray by claiming Groff had the lead for playing Bobby Darin in Just in Time. He would have made for a great winner, as you can glimpse from the Tony performance last night just how high energy and charismatic he is throughout that show. But at the end of the day, Criss is also giving a strong performance in what is clearly a better-written musical. Do you think a similar dynamic tipped the scales for Nicole Scherzinger over Audra McDonald? I think most folks would say that Gypsy is one of if not the best musical of all time, but voters were clearly more taken by Jamie Lloyd's radical reinterpretation of Sunset Boulevard than George C. Wolfe's version of Gypsy. Eckmann: I admit that I was definitely swayed for the first time (in the wrong direction) by the voter survey in The New York Times. It's normally the best barometer for the Tony Awards, so the fact that it wasn't totally accurate points to how fiercely close so many of these votes were. This was definitely the case in the McDonald-vs.-Scherzinger battle. I think that once again, the victory went to the performer in the production that was more popular with voters. McDonald was the only potential win for this revival of Gypsy, whereas Sunset Boulevard was strong enough to win Lighting Design and Musical Revival. Were there any other wins during the night that had you cheering? As a huge Purpose fan I'm sure you enjoyed Kara Young prevailing for the second year in a row. SEE 2025 Tony Awards first-timers club: Half of this year's acting winners triumphed for their Broadway debuts Buchanan: Yes, the two wins for Purpose were by far my favorites of the night! I predicted Young, but it was by no means a guarantee that she would win in that incredible field which included Jessica Hecht and Fina Strazza. But there is just no denying that Young is a generational talent and so supremely kind and charismatic to boot, so it is absolutely fitting and thrilling that she is one of the very few performers to win back-to-back at the Tonys and the first Black performer to do so, too. I will remember her performance as Aziza and her growing disillusionment over her night with the Jasper family for a very long time. I'm also delighted that Tony voters found a way to acknowledge Jacobs-Jenkins' brilliant, Pulitzer-winning play and Cole Escola in the same ceremony. While I'm sure Escola would have loved to win both prizes, I think the way they split the trophies — plus giving Oh, Mary! the directing prize for Sam Pinkleton — was very "appropriate," Jacobs-Jenkins pun intended. As a champion of the show since its off-Broadway days, were the two Oh, Mary! wins your favorites of the night? And what were some of the snubs or complete shut-outs that stung the most? Eckmann: I was so thrilled for Pinkleton! Oh, Mary! simply would not work the way it does without his guiding hand. In our current political moment, it's truly powerful to see that this radically queer work of bizarre genius can be a financial smash on Broadway and win mainstream awards. I was similarly ecstatic for Francis Jue, who managed to win Featured Actor even though Yellow Face lost Play Revival. He was truly one of the breakout stars of the campaign trail, and this was a wonderful way to honor not only his moving performance, but also his incredible career in the theater. It's hard to be mad at any of these wins because the season was just so strong. But I will continue to say that Real Women Have Curves should have been a Best Musical nominee. I wish there were more places for it to be rewarded last night. Alas, its only real shot was for Justina Machado, but Natalie Venetia Belcon has long had Featured Actress in a Musical sewn up. At least Real Women managed to secure a performance on the telecast, and I hope folks are inspired to buy tickets. The show has a gigantic heart that deserves to be celebrated. Speaking of performances, I think I was most moved by the host Cynthia Erivo and Sara Bareilles duetting on 'Tomorrow' from Annie during the In Memoriam segment. The image of them holding each other as they looked back at the image of the late Gavin Creel had me at a puddle of tears, and reinforced the theme of community which seemed to dominate this telecast. In a world where we constantly analyze winners and losers of the industry's biggest award, it was a needed reminder that everyone in attendance is truly a winner just for the opportunity to be in that room. SEE 2025 Tony Awards: 'Maybe Happy Ending' dominates with 6 wins, Nicole Scherzinger shocks with Best Actress win over Audra McDonald Buchanan: Beautifully said, and I agree seeing Bareilles' reaction at the end of the In Memoriam was incredibly powerful! I also loved Harvey Fierstein's Lifetime Achievement Award speech on the Tony Awards: Act One telecast and his message that he feels like he accidentally fell into his exceptional career in the theater after finding his community while painting show posters as an adolescent. It is hard to have too many gripes about the winners this year, but I will confess that I am a bit heartbroken that three of my favorite productions from this sensational Broadway season — Dead Outlaw, Gypsy, and The Hills of California — all went home empty-handed. Victories for David Yazbek and Erik Della Penna in Best Score, Audra McDonald in Best Actress of a Musical, and Laura Donnelly for Best Actress in a Play, respectively, would've made this Tony Awards an all-timer for me, personally. I am glad that Dead Outlaw, Gypsy, and the also-snubbed Just in Time acquitted themselves exceptionally well in their performances; I couldn't be more pleased that McDonald's otherworldly "Rose's Turn" has been recorded on video in an accessible form for posterity, and I'm sure Sunset Boulevard fans feel exactly the same way about Scherzinger's moving "As If We Never Said Goodbye." While we're on the subject of Best Actress in a Musical again, you and I foreshadowed this year's exceptionally close contest exactly one year ago last June when we offered our extremely early 2025 Tony predictions; I can't wait to do that guesswork for the 2026 Tonys with you again any day now, so stay tuned, Broadway fans! SIGN UP for Gold Derby's free newsletter with latest predictions Best of GoldDerby 'Maybe Happy Ending' star Darren Criss on his Tony nomination for playing a robot: 'Getting to do this is the true win' Who Needs a Tony to Reach EGOT? Sadie Sink on her character's 'emotional rage' in 'John Proctor Is the Villain' and her reaction to 'Stranger Things: The First Shadow' Click here to read the full article.
