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"Producers" Lane, Broderick Bowing Out
Springtime's come and gone again for Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick.
The duo, in the midst of a sold-out, box-office-bursting encore run as Max Bialystock and Leo Bloom respectively in Mel Brooks' The Producers, will not be extending their Broadway tour of duty past April 4.
Producers of The Producers on Friday put an end to speculation that the pair might continue past that date. "They're definitely leaving," said show rep Bill Coyle.
Coyle declined to speculate on who might replace the seemingly irreplaceable Lane and Broderick.
There was talk of Kelsey Grammer taking over for Lane as Bialystock and, but the Frasier star opted to do a telefilm instead. Another name being bandied about is former Saturday Night Live jokemeister Jon Lovitz, but nothing is official. (On the current season of HBO's Curb Your Enthusiasm, Larry David and David Schwimmer are being groomed by Brooks to take over, but, alas, that's just fiction...we think.)
Filling the roles will be key to the long-term success of the show, which won a record 12 Tony Awards including Best Musical and Best Actor for Lane.
Last week, The Producers hauled in $1.3 million, the biggest gross along the Great White Way. The first week of their encore run alone, which included a high-priced New Year's Eve performance, topped all competitors, grossing a record $1.6 million.
But without Lane and Broderick, the show didn't come close to that kind of take. The first guy to take over the part of rapscallion producer Bialystock, respected British actor Henry Goodman, was fired after he failed to impress Brooks and director-choreographer Susan Stroman.
Subsequent headliners, including ex-Wings star Steven Weber as the hapless accountant Bloom, failed to get the kind of consistent belly-wrenching laughs that Lane and Broderick were getting night after night, which led to Brooks recruiting Lane and Broderick for their limited-engagement encore.
Brooks had better success for the Los Angeles edition of the show, with Jason Alexander (Bialystock) and Martin Short (Bloom) in the lead roles.
A touring production of The Producers is also hitting cities across America and there's even talk of taking the show abroad to Germany, where, yes, "Springtime for Hitler" would definitely be performed.
But just because they won't be returning, doesn't mean Lane and Broderick are completely abandoning the musical.
The actors have agreed to star in a big-screen version of the Broadway production for Universal, which would bring The Producers full circle, since Brooks wrote and directed the original 1968 movie, starring Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder, upon which the musical is based. (The only number from the film that Brooks retained for the stage was the un-P.C. showstopper, "Springtime for Hitler.")
Before a new Producers film can start rolling, both stars have a full slate ahead of them. This year alone, Broderick will release three movies--Paramount's upcoming remake of The Stepford Wives with Nicole Kidman due in June, and Sundance fave Marie and Bruce and Disney's The Last Shot both slated for the fall.
Lane, meanwhile, will segue into rehearsals for Stephen Sondheim's The Frogs, which the actor is also rewriting. That production, directed by Stroman and costarring SNL veteran Chris Kattan, begins previews in June and officially premieres on July 15. He also has a film, Cabbages & Queens, due out later this year.
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