First ABBA, then Green Day—now the Beach Boys are getting the song-and-dance treatment. Fox 2000 Pictures announced on Friday that they have purchased an original musical pitch by Erin Brockovitch writer Susannah Grant and rights to songs in Brian Wilson’s endless summer catalogue. They emerged from a bidding war with Universal Pictures about $2 million lighter.
As with Mamma Mia!, the musical will not be a biopic of the band. New performances of the songs will be set in an original story about Southern California beach culture in the ‘60s. The film, as yet untitled, will be co-produced by Uncle Jesse...um, John Stamos, who sat in with the band’s Wilson-less ‘80s incarnation for an episode of Full House and performed occasionally with them afterwards. Along with his current partners, Craig Zadan and Neil Meron, Stamos also helmed the 2000 ABC biographical miniseries The Beach Boys: An American Family.
This isn’t the first time the Beach Boys’ gorgeous teen dream symphonies have been set to the stage. Good Vibrations, an original narrative about a road trip from New England to California tracked with Pet Sounds-era compositions, lasted for three months on Broadway in 2005. So we’ve got our fingers crossed for a celluloid tribute that does the Boys justice – but if Pierce Brosnan starts belting out “In My Room,” we are so outta there.
