Breaking Baz: World Premiere Of ‘The Greatest Showman’ Stage Musical With Five New Songs Will Open In UK In 2026 Ahead Of Disney Theatrical Taking To West End & Broadway

EXCLUSIVE: The stage adaptation of musical movie The Greatest Showmanwhich starred Hugh Jackman portraying the early life of entertainer P.T. Barnum, will have its world premiere in the British West Country city of Bristol, around March 2026, ahead of its launch in the West End and on Broadway.

Full of exotic beasts, bearded ladies, strapping giant strong men and dare-devil acrobats, along with the likes of Zendaya, Michelle Williams, Rebecca Ferguson and Zac Efron, the 20th Century film grossed $459M worldwide.

But, it’s fair to say, that audiences went giddy over the songs and the film’s embrace of its disparate characters who bonded as a family, rather than its storyline.

Songwriting duo Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, who won a Golden Globe and a Grammy and received an Oscar-nomination for the 2017  film’s pop classic “This Is Me”, have written an additional five new songs to augment the hits they penned for the picture directed by Michael Gracey.

Those numbers include “All The Ones You Love,” Anne Quart, Disney Theatrical Group’s executive producer, assures me.

“All of the songs that people are excited about are all in the show,” she promises as she begins to tick them off one by one. There’s “The Greatest Show”, “A Million Dreams”, “Come Alive”, “The Other Side”, “Rewrite the Stars”, “Tightrope” and “From Now On”.

One of the new Pasek and Paul songs, which I’ve listened to, is a rousing, rallying anthem called “Show Goes On”, which will bring the curtain down at the end of act one.

Lauded director Casey Nicholaw, who won Tony Awards for his direction of The Book of Mormonand for his choreography on Some Like It Hothas been given the task by Disney Theatrical Group, led by  managing director Andrew Flatt, Quart and Chief Creative Officer Thomas Schumacher, to inject his renowned show-stopping brio into the heart of The Greatest Showman. He will direct and choreograph. Book is by Tim Federle (High School Musical: The Musical: The Series, High School Musical: The Musical: Holiday Special).

The show is being produced by Disney Theatrical and The Seelig Group, a producer of the movie. It’s the first 20th Century title to be adapted by Disney for the stage. The creatives have spent months fine-tuning the material. They held an extensive workshop in London last fall.

Quart confirms the positive buzz I was hearing. “It was one of those spaces where you felt that thing, you feel when something special has happened,” she says. “And it was very much an indicator for us that certainly we have endless notes and work to do and cutting a song and removing a scene and all the things, but the bones are right and the structure’s good. So we’re feeling very hopeful.”

The Greatest Showman will rehearse from late December or very early January and then head to the Bristol Hippodrome, a favourite tryout venue for Disney Theatrical ventures, where it will have its world premiere in March-ish. No official date has been set. I have it on the authority of Andrew Lloyd Webber, whose LW Theatres group controls the Theatre Royal Drury Lane, that there’s an agreement in place for The Greatest Showman to go there after its tryout in Bristol.

Casting for principal roles is well underway. Jackman, for starters, will not be reprising his screen role as Barnum.

However, I was curious about  Keala Settle who will forever be associated with the mammoth chart-topping “This is Me”. I remember her electrifying performance brought the house down at the Oscars.

The actress often works in London, and plays the interfering Miss. Coddle, the Head Shiztress of Shiz University in the Wicked movie. I pressed Quart about whether Settle or anyone from the film would be in the show.

She felt this would be unlikely. However, she clarified: “Look, we haven’t finished casting, so it’s hard. I can’t say anything for sure. But it isn’t our intention that anyone from the film will be in the musical.”

Key casting has been ongoing for six months and it moves up a phase imminently with open auditions kicking off  this month and next, in Dublin, Belfast, Birmingham, Cardiff, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Leeds, Manchester, Exeter, Newcastle and London.

“We’re legitimately really looking for unexpected talent and people who, perhaps maybe haven’t been your musical theater kid who’ve gone through the traditional format, but people who have a gift that they maybe only shared with their shower or their school choir or their church or something. I’m hoping that we find some really unique, extraordinary humans,” Quart says while also noting that it’s the production’s intention to cast UK talent.

There are no brand new characters but Quart tells me that “we may be presenting characters from the film in a slightly different way,” making sure, for instance, that Charity, Barnum’s wife, played in the film by Michelle Williams, has agency. Unlike the film, where she was thinly sketched, the character in the stage production “will  have a proper arc,” Quart says.

After all, Quart adds, “she’s married to a complicated man who is a visionary, but also can’t pay the rent. And what’s the nuance of that like?”

And the creatives have ensured, says Quart, that the other key female character, Anne Wheeler, the young woman Zendaya played in the film, “has real space and a story to tell.“

The songs from the movie have had literally billions of plays on Spotify and other streamers.

“And I think the thing about this music that is extraordinary is that everybody has personalized it,” Quart notes.

“People are running and exercising to ‘This Is Me’. People are playing ‘Greatest Show’ while they clean their apartments. I think no matter who I talk to, it’s really personal. And so in considering whether or not it’s worthy of turning it into a musical, it became about people’s connection to the music and the ability to create something that’s joyful and aspirational, but that can break your heart and also give you all the songs you love.”

“We’re trying to build a musical that is very human and very much about found family and about losing yourself and coming back to yourself in the end,” Quart adds.

My personal benchmark for Disney stage musicals has always been The Lion King. Julie Taymor took the ingredients  from the first animated movie, plus the songs by Elton John and Tim Rice and turned it into a theatrical work of art, and from everything I’m hearing my sense is that’s what  Nicholaw, Federle, Pasack, Paul and orchestrator Alex Lacamoire and the Disney musical brass are undertaking here.

“How do you tell the story of the myth of Barnum, this man who certainly is complicated, but in our musical, this man who has a drive and a passion to entertain people, but feels like he isn’t entitled to have that kind of space in life,” Quart says.

The film’s director Gracey tells me that he has no involvement with the show. He seemed a little down when we spoke about it, but he feels that the show’s in good hands.

“Well, first of all, Michael and I had some time together and he came and sat with me in the office, and I really wanted to hear about the story of how the film came to be and the things that they struggled with. So certainly we’ve had conversations with Michael,” Quart says.

While showering praise on the “enormously talented” Mr. Gracey, Quart was clear-eyed about who and what the production requires.

“We’re making a musical for the stage, and so we put together a team of people who we felt were expert at doing that. And so it wasn’t about: ‘not the movie people’, as much as leaning into Casey who obviously has an enormous talent when it comes to both delivering heart and comedy, which every musical needs a little bit of, as well as kind of amazing show shopping numbers. There’s kind of nobody better,” Quart says.

“Our only job right now is to make a great show, that is the only thing we have to do. Our first plan is to make it great and then of course, if we are able to succeed in that, we will eventually want it to be in the West End and we want it to be in New York, and I hope in many, many other places,” Quart adds.

Thoughts will soon turn to whether The Greatest Showman transfers to Drury Lane.

Now, I gotta be clear, this cannot happen until after what is hoped will be a successful run of the Disney musical Hercules that opens at the Drury this June. Nicholaw is also directing and choreographing Hercules with rehearsals beginning in April.

Quart would not comment on that nugget of information.

“We’re not getting ahead over our skis in terms of making plans until we have landed the first plane which is to make it great,” she reiterates.

My calculation is that The Greatest Showman wouldn’t be in the Drury Lane any earlier than the end of 2026, but then there’s also the slim possibility that it could go to Broadway first and then take over the Drury Lane.

First of all, let’s see how strong Hercules is, right?