Lin-Manuel Miranda will make his long-awaited return to Broadway in spring 2027 when his gender-flipped musical adaptation of The Warriors arrives at the Lunt-Fontanne Theater next April, per The New York Times.
The project — which Miranda developed with playwright and actress Eisa Davis — will be his first Broadway show since Hamilton. Miranda and Davis penned the music, lyrics, and book for the show, while Miranda is also one of the lead producers. (He will not, however, act in the show as he did for Hamilton.)
The Warriors is one of the most famous modern New York City tales. It chronicles the treacherous journey of a street gang, the Warriors, that must return to their home on Coney Island after being framed for the murder of a gang leader at a summit in the Bronx. (It’s based on the ancient Greek story of Anabasis.) Author Sol Yurick published the original novel, The Warriors, in 1965, while filmmaker Walter Hill directed the cult classic movie adaptation in 1979. Miranda and Davis’ version retains the same narrative contours, though they decided to make all the members of the Warriors gang women.
Their version, Warriors (no “the”), also didn’t begin as a musical, but as an album. Released in 2024, the LP was produced by Mike Elizondo, with Nas serving as an executive producer. It featured an array of hip-hop legends and big-name actors, including Lauryn Hill, RZA, Ghostface Killah, Colman Domingo, Sasha Hutchings, and Billy Porter.
After the album’s release, Miranda and Davis began developing and workshopping the LP as a musical. The final product will be just one act with a cast of about 20 (though a cast hasn’t been announced yet). Miranda and Davis also told The Times they’ve continued to work on the music, and that most of the show will be sung, with only a few scenes of non-musical dialog.
Warriors will be directed by Jenny Koons, while Andy Blankenbuehler, a Hamilton alum, will co-direct and choreograph. The musical is set to begin previews next March.
Miranda has been hoping to make a Warriors musical for a long time, securing the rights to a stage adaptation several years ago. “One of the reasons I wanted to dramatise it was: That original film has every New Yorker’s primal fears onscreen — fear of being pursued by the police, fear of getting caught in the wrong neighbourhood at night, fear of falling in the train tracks, fear of scary gangs with face paint,” he said. “And then when Eisa saw the movie, she said, ‘I’m really interested in the notion of peace.’ And what I’m proud of, on the other side of two years of writing together, is the baby looks like both of us: It explores those fears and also explores the notion of what does true peace look like.”
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Davis added: “There’s one line that’s on the album that’s also in the musical, which is ‘What do you do when they kill everything you believe in?’ And I think that that question is a question that all of us are wrestling with in the world right now, and I think that that’s something that these characters are really bringing to light for us, in the process of trying to get home alive.”
From Rolling Stone US
