Broadway-Bound KING KONG Will Get Developmental Lab This Fall

Kong is coming!

As BroadwayWorld previously reported, King Kong, will arrive on Broadway in 2018, but before it does, the musical will get a developmental lab this fall. According to an Equity casting notice, a lab will take place this November in preparation for its upcoming Broadway run.

King Kong's first preview, press opening, and on-sale dates will be announced in the coming months. King Kong will play the Broadway Theatre following the limited engagement of Miss Saigon which as previously announced will begin its North American tour in September 2018.

King Kong is written by Jack Thorne, who received the 2017 Olivier Award and the Evening Standard Award for Best Play for Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, and wrote the critically acclaimed play Let the Right One In.

The show will be Directed and choreographed by Drew McOnie, an Olivier Award winner for the London production of In the Heights and an Olivier Award nominee this year for Jesus Christ Superstar. McOnie Directed the U.K. premiere of Baz Luhrmann's Strictly Ballroom The Musical, and the recent London productions of The Wild Party and On the Town.

The score for King Kong is composed by four-time Grammy nominee Marius de Vries (the films La La Land, Moulin Rouge, and Romeo + Juliet) with songs by Helpmann Award winner Eddie Perfect, composer and lyricist of the Broadway-bound Beetlejuice, Strictly Ballroom The Musical and Shane Warne The Musical.

Pioneering creature designer Sonny Tilders developed Kong for the show, bringing together the worlds of animatronics and puppetry that has never been seen on stage before. Tilders was honored by the Helpmann Awards, Australia's highest theatrical honor, for Outstanding Theatrical Achievement.

The show, which ran in Australia in 2013 and has gone through a series of readings and workshops since, welcomes new creative team members after cycling through several Broadway notables. Composer Jason Robert Brown was brought onboard in 2015 to write songs with De Vries. A previous version featured a book by Marsha Norman, who departed the production in late 2016. A 2016 workshop featured direction by Tony nominee Eric D. Shaeffer and choreography by Tony nominee Joshua Bergasse.

Based on the novel of the original 1933 screenplay, the stage show of King Kong is a contemporary take on the classic tale of beauty and the beast.

King Kong's design team for Broadway will include Peter England (Set Design), Sonny Tilders (Creature Design), Roger Kirk (Costume Design), Peter Mumford (Lighting Design), Peter Hylenski (Sound Design), Gavin Robins (Aerial and King Kong Movement Director),