SCRUBS Creator Bill Lawrence Reveals Plans for Broadway Musical Version!

Back in September of 2012, BroadwayWorld reported that a Broadway adaptation of the long-running NBC comedy series SCRUBS was in development. Now, Entertainment Weekly has revealed a much better picture of what the production will look -- and sound -- like.

And don't worry, the sitcom's star Zach Braff, who will be appearing on Broadway soon in BULLETS OVER BROADWAY "will be involved creatively because he's a theater lover like me," series creator Bill Lawrence told EW in an interview, "but part of the fun for us is that we would go with Broadway musical stars."

Talking about his inspirations for the project, Lawrence told the site: "One of the things we really cared about on the show was that we always incorporated not only pop music, but a lot of singing and songwriting, ranging from an a cappella group to a full-blown musical episode. We always had a big love for it. Randall Winston, who's part of my company here and produced Scrubs, was talking to a British theater group, and it turns out Scrubs is very, very big in the U.K. When Zach [Braff] went over there and did his play All New People, he'd come out at the end and there would be thousands of Scrubs fans. So then we really started taking seriously the idea of Scrubs as a musical. And the only reason I felt like we could entertain this idea is that it's not going on - it's going back."

Lawrence went on to comment on the timeline, saying: 'We're negotiating with different theater groups who will hopefully put up the money for a year to pay the composers to develop [spec songs]. Disney has nicely become a silent partner in giving the rights for us to go shop it. And the most fun thing for a theater junkie is we've already reached the stage that various composers have been submitting songs based on an outline that we put together for the type of stuff we would do."

On the music, Lawrence told EW: "Right now what's cool for us as musical geeks is trying to figure out what the sound is. We're looking at everything from the singer-songwriter hip version that you can say they did with Spring Awakening to the type of sardonic Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson-type stuff."

Scrubs aired on NBC for nine years, beginning in 2001. It was picked up by ABC for its eighth and final season. The sitcom, which centered on a group of young interns, starred Zach Braff (Bullets Over Broadway) and John C. McGinley (Glengarry Glen Ross).

Several episodes of the series took the form of a musical, including the sixth season episode 'My Musical' which had the characters spontaneously breaking into song. The episode earned an Emmy Award and the series picked up a Peabody Award for its "fearlessly smashing traditional comic formulas".

For the full interview, click here.