Stage Version of THE FIVE HEARTBEATS Aiming for Broadway

According to Deadline, Robert Townsend is aiming to bring a stage version of his 1991 film The Five Heartbeats to Broadway. Townsend will write the play with Keenan Ivory Wayans, who also wrote the screenplay.

Townsend tells Deadline that the so will "tell a similar story with music that people know from the movie, but there is a composer, Grammy-Award winner, a guy who has won some big awards who already said he will write an original song for us."

Produced and distributed by 20th Century Fox, the film's main cast included Townsend, Michael Wright, Leon Robinson, Harry J. Lennix, Tico Wells, Harold Nicholas of the Nicholas Brothers, and Diahann Carroll.[1] The plot of the film (which is loosely based on the lives of several artists: The Dells, The Temptations, Four Tops, Wilson Pickett, James Brown, Frankie Lymon, Sam Cooke and others) follows the three decade career of the rhythm and blues vocal group The Five Heartbeats. The film depicts the rise and fall of a Motown inspired soul act through the eyes of one of the Heartbeats, Donald "Duck" Matthews.

The film was released to most North American audiences on March 29, 1991.