Animal House Musical to Bring the Party to Broadway

When the Great White Way gets turned into Frat Row, will theatergoers applaud an on-stage toga party?

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Big men on campus, rejoice: the beer-crushing, Playboy-reading, Jell-O-slurping, zit-impersonating personalities of John Landis’ 1978 flick National Lampoon’s Animal House will soon come back to life. And this time, it’ll happen on Broadway.

According to the Hollywood Reporter and the New York Times, Universal Pictures announced Monday it will be making the college-humor comedy that launched John Belushi’s career into a musical.  Belushi, who played the seventh-year undergraduate Bluto Blutarsky, passed away 30 years ago, on March 5, 1982, the Times notes.

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The Barenaked Ladies will compose an original score and The Book of Mormon’s Casey Nicholaw, a Tony winner, will direct and choreograph. Animal House will follow a number of recent Broadway successes produced by Universal, including Billy Elliot and Wicked. The company also has a musical version of Bring It On in the works.

Set in 1962, the comedy glorified sixth-year students, frat life and debauchery while chronicling Dean Vernon Wormer’s attempts to expel the Delta Tau Chi Fraternity from campus. In addition to Belushi, Animal House also starred Tom Hulce and Karen Allen.

The cast and schedule have yet to be announced, but NewsFeed can’t wait to see the troublemakers in action again.

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