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FILM PRODUCER PAULA WAGNER GETS BACK TO HER THEATER ROOTS WITH 'PRETTY WOMAN: THE MUSICAL'
THEATER ALWAYS HELD a powerful magic for me, a girl from Ohio with dreams of the stage, but the Broadway landscape I faced as an actress in the 1970s lacked much of what defines its success today. I did perform on Broadway in the '70s, but soon I made my way to Hollywood in search of bigger dreams behind the scenes.
I started at Creative Artists Agency, which was just a small firm at the time, and I became an agent, then a film producer, and later a studio executive. It wasn't until I returned home to the theater in 2012 as the lead producer of "The Heiress" and a co-producer on "Grace" that I realized how much had changed, and for the better.
The force of Broadway today is undeniable. Rising numbers in box office revenue and spikes in attendance support the general buzz of excitement throughout the theater world. Opportunities for new ideas abound - even, and maybe especially, if they are based on old movies.
Six years ago, the time was finally right to shepherd "Pretty Woman: The Musical" to Broadway as its lead producer. Garry Marshall's 1990 film was a worldwide hit, the rare romantic comedy that crossed international borders and earned itself a permanent spot in the pop culture pantheon. Garry's vision for the stage adaptation was to highlight the musicality inherent in the film and infuse it with the kind of electricity you can find only on the stage. The challenge, shared among Garry, his co-writer J.F. Lawton, director Jerry Mitchell, composers Bryan Adams and Jim Vallance, the entire creative team and me, was to retain the essence of what fans cherish about the film while giving theater audiences reasons to fall in love...