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Photo: © 2017 Mary Ellen Matthews (NEW YORK) — You have a bunch of copyright-infringing college guys to thank for the new Mean Girls Broadway musical.
According to Tina Fey, who wrote the original screenplay for the Lindsay Lohan-starring 2004 film, she was motivated to bring the movie from screen to stage after seeing stage versions start to pop up on college campuses.
“I started seeing like, college guys writing their version of it — illegally — and I was like, ‘Oh heck no!’” Fey tells ABC Radio. “I was like, ‘I’ve done too many different drafts of this screenplay for some junior boy in college to write this.’”
She went to producer Lorne Michaels and Paramount with the idea and they gave her the OK. Thus, Mean Girls on Broadway was born. This version is slightly updated for today’s audience – namely, it incorporates social media where the original film didn’t.
“It is part of the universe,” Fey says. But, she adds, “The show really is not about social media; it’s about human beings and what we do to each other.”
As for what she hopes audiences will take away from the show, Fey says she wants them to have a “fantastically entertaining night at the theater” and to have “a positive feeling on the way out.”
“I think the show provides a lot of laughs and a lot of great music and a lot of incredible performances from these young people singing their faces off, dancing their faces off,” Fey says.
As Gretchen Wieners would say, that’s so fetch.
Mean Girls previews began on Broadway this week.
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