Video: THE GREAT GATSBY Creative Team Talks Public Domain and Adaptation on CBS Sunday Morning

CBS Sunday Morning correspondent Lee Cowan spoke with F. Scott Fitzgerald's great-granddaughter, and the creative team of The Great Gatsby about adapting the novel into a musical after it became public domain in 2021.

While the Fitzgerald estate did have control over previous adaptations of the novel, F. Scott Fitzgerald's great-granddaughter Blake Hazard, and trustee of the Estate, says that when the Great Gatsby is adapted now, she has "hope there'll be some faithfulness, but we don't have any control over it. So we just have to kind of embrace it." 

The Great Gatsby Broadway Director Mark Bruni states: "Any group of artists is going to distill down a story through their own lens."

Their aim was to stay close the source material, but expand the perspective: "We didn't want to do something that was wildly different from the novel. We wanted to add perspective and layers to the novel," says book writer Kait Kerrigan.

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s timeless, seminal novel comes to the Broadway musical stage for the first time ever in The Great Gatsby. Transporting audiences to the lavish Roaring Twenties, the story follows eccentric and mysterious millionaire Jay Gatsby, who will stop at nothing in the pursuit of the lost love of his youth, Daisy Buchanan. Through its fascinatingly nuanced characters – driven by complex inner lives, erupting with extravagance and longing – this epic tale has always been destined to sing. Now, it finally comes to life on the greatest American stage, through an electrifying jazz and pop-infused score, and a grand production befitting the 21st century.

Tony Award-nominated Jeremy Jordan and Eva Noblezada lead the cast as Jay Gatsby and Daisy Buchanan. Rounding out the principal cast are Noah J. Ricketts as Nick Carraway, Samantha Pauly as Jordan Baker, Sara Chase as Myrtle Wilson, John Zdrojeski as Tom Buchanan, Paul Whitty as George Wilson, and Eric Anderson as Wolfsheim.