The news that Hollywood is planning to turn The Producers into a film (again) seems to have been the first in a rash of stories regarding West End productions making their way over to other mediums.
First up is Bat Boy: the musical. Currently showing at the Shaftsbury Theatre, Bat Boy tells the story of a half boy/half bat discovered in the caves of West Virginia. The show recently held it's one hundredth performance, at which the producers announced that the musical was about to become a movie, directed by John 'American Werewolf in London' Landis.
The other stage musical to get a bit of a makeover is Jerry Springer - the Opera. Despite running into a few problems both here and abroad in the past few weeks, the careers of the show's creators, Stewart Lee and Richard Thomas are still looking rosy as they've just been asked to write and produce a series of "bespoke comic operas based on different television formats" for BBC2.
The channel, who seem to be on a bit of an arts crusade at the moment, have already snapped up the rights to televise Jerry Springer - The Opera next year, but have taken the whole thing a step further by asking Lee and Thomas to adapt other programmes, such as Question Time (yes, really), into thirty minute mini-operas.
Londonist dearly hopes that the writers won't go for the obvious choices like the Weakest Link when they're planning their adaptations. For what it's worth the list of BBC programs we'd like to see as operas includes Top Gear, Ready Steady Cook, Watchdog, University Challenge, and definitely Newsnight Review.
