A Live Musical Adaptation of Mel Brooks' YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN Set For Fall on ABC

ABC today announced that the network will debut its latest live musical event this fall with "Young Frankenstein Live!" (working title), produced by the legendary director, writer, actor, comedian, producer and composer, Mel Brooks. The announcement comes on the heels of the network's most recent hit musical spectacular, "The Wonderful World of Disney presents The Little Mermaid Live!," which marked the most-watched made-for-TV musical on any network in nearly four years and ranked as the week's No. 1 entertainment show.

Based on the Broadway stage version of "Young Frankenstein," "Young Frankenstein Live!" will follow Mel Brooks' and Gene Wilder's comedic reimagining of the Mary Shelley classic novel. The live production will feature music from the stage adaptation, originally composed by Brooks. An airdate and cast announcement will be made at a later date.

The 2007 Broadway production, which was based on Mel Brooks' 1974 film starring Gene Wilder, Peter Boyle, Cloris Leachman and Marty Feldman, was nominated for three Tony Awards.

Young Frankenstein is the wickedly inspired re-imagining of the Frankenstein legend based on Mel Brooks' classic comedy masterpiece, the story follows bright young Dr. Frankenstein (that's Fronkensteen) as he attempts to complete his grandfather's masterwork and bring a corpse to life. Together with his oddly shaped and endearing helper Igor (that's Eye-gor), his curvaceous lab assistant Inga, and in spite of his incredibly self-involved madcap fiance Elizabeth, Frankenstein succeeds in creating a monster -- but not without scary and quite often hilarious complications.

Mel Brooks, director, producer, writer and actor, is in an elite group as one of the few entertainers to earn all four major entertainment prizes - the Tony, the Emmy, Grammy, and Oscar. His career began in television writing for Your Show of Shows and together with Buck Henry creating the long running TV series Get Smart. He then teamed up with Carl Reiner to write and perform the Grammy-winning 2000 Year Old Man comedy albums & books. Brooks won his first Oscar in 1964 for writing and narrating the animated short The Critic and his second for the screenplay of his first feature film, The Producers in 1968. Many hit comedy films followed including The Twelve Chairs, Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein, Silent Movie, High Anxiety, History of the World Part I, To Be or Not to Be, Spaceballs, Life Stinks, Robin Hood: Men in Tights and Dracula: Dead and Loving It.

His film company, Brooksfilms Limited also produced critically acclaimed films such as The Elephant Man, The Fly, Frances, My Favorite Year and 84 Charring Cross Road. For three successive seasons, 1997-1999 Mel Brooks won Emmy Awards for his role as "Uncle Phil" on the hit sitcom Mad About You. Brooks received three 2001 Tony Awards and two Grammy Awards for The Producers: the New Mel Brooks Musical, which ran on Broadway from 2001 to 2006. The Producers still holds the record for the most Tony awards ever won by a Broadway musical. He followed that success with The New Mel Brooks Musical Young Frankenstein, which ran on Broadway from 2007 to 2009 and opened in London's West End in the Fall of 2017 to rave reviews. In 2009 Mel Brooks received The Kennedy Center Honors, recognizing a lifetime of extraordinary contributions to American culture. In 2016 Mel Brooks was invited to the White House, where President Obama presented him with The National Medal of Arts - the highest award given to artists by the United States government.

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