Breaking News: IF/THEN's Tom Kitt and Brian Yorkey Teaming on Broadway-Bound Musical THE VISITOR

Producer Aaron Harnick announced today that The Visitor, based on the 2007 Oscar-nominated dramatic film of the same name, will get the musical treatment from Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize winning team Tom Kitt and Brian Yorkey. The Broadway-bound musical will have a private industry reading this December.

The Visitor is the poignant and urgent story of Walter, a lost soul who gets a new lease on life with the arrival of Terek, an undocumented immigrant who challenges Walter's capacity for acceptance, change, and even intimacy in the wake of his wife's passing. In it, Walter connects with Terek over a shared appreciation of music, a bond that slowly builds into a soul-stirring, unexpected friendship. Set in a culturally-divided post-9/11 New York City, The Visitor suggests that the ties that bind us--music, passion, love--are far more powerful tools for healing than the things that tear us apart.

Thomas McCarthy's film The Visitor emerged as one of the true breakout independent films of the last decade, premiering to rave reviews at the 2007 Toronto International Film Festival and Sundance in 2008 before winning the 2008 Independent Spirit Award for Best Director and receiving an Academy Award nomination for leading actor Richard Jenkins in a stunning performance that would come to redefine the actor's entire career.

Photo Credit: Walter McBride