From Beaches to Broadway: Movies That Made the Leap to Hit Musicals
From multiplex to marquee, Broadway is raiding Hollywood’s hit list. Tina Fey’s Mean Girls vaulted to the stage in April 2018, proving nostalgia can power a new smash without a scene-by-scene rerun.
Broadway has a habit of raiding the movie shelf, and honestly, when the right team is steering, it works. Two recent examples that actually found their own voice on stage: Mean Girls and Waitress.
Mean Girls (2018)
Tina Fey brought her teen comedy to Broadway in April 2018, with Erika Henningsen playing Cady Heron — the role Lindsay Lohan made famous on screen. The creative approach wasn’t copy-paste. Henningsen put it pretty plainly at the time, and it explains why the musical clicked on its own terms:
"The greatest thing about bringing this musical to life is that our creative team didn’t say, 'Can you just recreate the iconic film performance?' We could never hope to. It has been really special being able to recreate these characters for a musical and in this current time period."
That quote is from April 2018, and you can feel the relief in it. Instead of doing a karaoke version of the movie, they updated the characters for the moment and let the cast build their own takes.
Waitress (2016)
Two years earlier, Sara Bareilles had already set the table with Waitress, which opened on Broadway in 2016. Bareilles didn’t just write the score — she’s been deeply tied to the show — and her description of why it works is exactly how the musical plays:
"I just think Waitress is comfort food. It’s got so much heart and it’s got so much humor. I know I’m biased because I’m intimately involved, but I really believe in the story of resilience and strength and vulnerability."
That was from February 2019, and, yes, she’s biased — but not wrong. Waitress leans into warmth and wit, and the resilience at its core gives it more bite than the sugary surface suggests.
Point is, the movie-to-musical pipeline isn’t going anywhere. When the teams behind these shows treat the films as a starting point, not a script to trace, the stage versions can feel fresh instead of familiar.