With Sunday night’s hectic, ambitious and hormonal Grease, Fox proved it could up the ante in the new mini-industry of musicals on TV, an industry so far controlled by NBC, with its The Sound of Music Live ‘Peter Pan Live and The Wiz Live. Grease: Live was captured by 44 cameras and performed on two massive Warner Bros. soundstages over 20 acres in Burbank, Calif.
Ever since NBC’s success with the live Sound of Music in 2012, event musicals have become a more frequent broadcast network staple. ABC plans a musical remake of Dirty Dancing and Fox intends to do a new Rocky Horror Picture Show later this year. For its first entry, Fox offers Grease: Live on Sunday, a mashup of the original stage musical and the 1978 movie that followed it.
Fresh off Broadway blockbuster Hamilton, director Thomas Kail and designer David Korins reveal plans for Fox’s Jan. 31 entry into the live musical game. In a further attempt to bring the immediacy of theater to television, Fox’s upcoming Grease: Live will be the first of the recent crop of small-screen live musical events to be staged in front of a studio audience.
Fox aired the first video promo for the star-studded, live production during Tuesday night’s episode of Scream Queens.
