TIME: 'The Top 10 Films That Shouldn't Have Made It to Broadway'

1. Carrie (1976)



It's hard to believe that such an incredibly awful idea could come from the Royal Shakespeare Company.



In 1988 Friedrich Kurz produced a musical version of Carrie — based on Brian De Palma's film adaptation of Stephen King's novel — for a four-week run in England, where it was met with mixed reviews and experienced several technical problems.

One of those included stagehands trying to figure out how to spill fake blood on the show's main character without shorting her microphone.



Still, Carrie made it all the way to Broadway — at the cost of a whopping $8 million. But after three days and a flood of highly abusive reviews, the show closed, losing more than $7 million. The horrific tale was doomed from the beginning.








The New York Times wrote that if the play had been consistent in its "uninhibited tastelessness" it could have been a camp masterpiece.

Cue the 2006 production by Theater Couture, a gay performance group. The writer, Erik Jackson, explaining how he approached King with the idea of producing a camp version of his book, said that he told the author, "Carrie is ... the tale of the ultimate outcast. Who better than a big group of outcasts like us to do it in a way that would be funny and yet touching?"



The production went on to receive modest reviews and did not lose millions of dollars. Frighteningly, there has been talk of mounting a new big-budget version of the disastrous musical.














2. High Fidelity (2000)



Nick Hornby's book made for an instant cult classic when the movie version was released in 2000. And you would think movies with great soundtracks would seamlessly make their way to Broadway.


But High Fidelity's musical debut in 2006 was a historic flop, getting the boot after only 10 days and 13 performances. It received awful reviews, not for the acting but mainly for the poor manner in which the show's producers re-created the movie's iconic soundtrack.

Despite the film's popularity, it brought in horrific numbers at the box office, costing more than $10 million to stage but earning less than $300,000. The New York Times called it one of the "all-time most forgettable musicals."














3. Sweet Smell of Success (1957)



One of cinema's great newspaper films, Sweet Smell of Success thrives on cynicism and dirty wit.

With a script containing more memorable one-liners than an entire year's worth of today's films ("I'd hate to take a bite out of you. You're a cookie full of arsenic"), Success — a New York City–set film about a Walter Winchell–like press columnist (a cutting Burt Lancaster) and the toadying press agent who follows in his wake (Tony Curtis) — seemed like a great idea in the right Broadway hands.





Yet despite the presence of playwright John Guare (Six Degrees of Separation) and star John Lithgow, it fell flat.

Part of it was, as TIME's Richard Zoglin put it, "For all its cynicism, the movie managed to convey the racy excitement of its tawdry milieu ... The musical just makes us see the dirt."



But the biggest knock against the stage production was the fact that Success works best as a movie, containing some of the most beautiful cinematography ever seen in film noir (thanks to the camerawork of James Wong Howe).

Whether in color or black and white, New York City has rarely looked more dangerously alluring.














4. La Strada (1954)



It starred Bernadette Peters.
It was choreographed by Alvin Ailey.


It had talent, but the musical version of La Strada closed after one performance in 1969.



The film shone in black-and-white glory, but Broadway was one road not open to Federico Fellini's Academy Award–winning "blend of myth and surrealism."

New York City, however, wasn't inhospitable to all shows inspired by the legendary Italian director's work: the musical Nine, based on Fellini's 8½, fared better.














5. Shrek (2001)



Making Shrek into a stage musical was a bad idea not because it wasn't successful — the show ran for more than a year on Broadway, had a U.S. tour and will have a West End tour in 2011 — but more because no one really likes the idea of a man dressed in a green ogre suit.

Not unless it's Halloween.




TIME's theater critic Richard Zoglin wrote of the stage version, "Without the speed and dexterity of the digital palette, everything that was light and offhand in Shrek on-screen becomes heavy and in-your-face in Shrek onstage."

There's something about animated farts that just seems far more palatable.














6. The Fearless Vampire Killers (1967)



Dance of the Vampires was one of Broadway's greatest recent flops — the $12 million show lost its entire investment after concluding a four-month run in January 2003.

The show was an adaptation of a German musical that was itself based on Roman Polanski's 1967 pulp horror film The Fearless Vampire Killers.




A few translations in genre and geography later, the result was an unmitigated, campy disaster, panned for its uneven acting, over-the-top theatrics and awkward script — one song lyric goes, "Garlic, garlic/ The secret of staying young/ Garlic, garlic/ That's why we're so well hung."

One reviewer offered this advice to those who had already bought tickets: "You'll probably enjoy it most if you bring low expectations. And earplugs."














7. Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961)



Never hire Mary Tyler Moore to play a role originally filled by Audrey Hepburn. Moore is nice and all — we adored her as "The Dick Van Dyke Show's" Laura Petrie — but she's the lovable girl-next-door type of actress.

Audrey Hepburn is a glamorous starlet, the type of woman who exists only as a crafted Hollywood fantasy. Asking Moore to fill her shoes is like asking Sandra Bullock to play Sophia Loren.




Not that we've actually seen Moore's interpretation of Truman Capote's delightfully loopy Holly Golightly character.

The 1966 Broadway production of the novella turned film closed during previews, without ever officially opening to the public. Yikes!














8. On the Waterfront (1954)



Eight performances was all it took for Broadway goers to realize that On the Waterfront was all at sea on the Broadway stage.


Minus Marlon Brando, Karl Malden and the rest of the cast from a film that raked in eight Oscars, the 1995 Broadway play had a number of bad omens during its preview performances, including the replacement of its director and one of the main actors.

But the worst came during the first act of the final preview performance, when the actor playing Barney, a tough Mob lieutenant, fell on stage and had a heart attack. Another actor broke character and shouted for a doctor. The audience sat there, stunned, some weeping, as doctors performed CPR.

Days later, the flagging show would find itself in need of resuscitation, but no rescue came.














9. Singin' in the Rain (1952)



We know what you're thinking:
It's the greatest movie musical ever made. It has that joyful title song. It starred Gene Kelly!




Exactly. Singin' in the Rain starred Gene Kelly, and does anyone really want to see any other mortal attempt to fill his dancing shoes?

A 1985 Broadway production ran longer than its less-than-stellar reviews would suggest, but did not achieve the success of the classic 1952 film. The movie not only had all the ingredients of a wonderful musical, but was also uniquely suited to its subject:

Singin' in the Rain, whose protagonist is a silent-motion-picture actor adjusting to the talkies, is simply more Hollywood than Broadway.














10. The Yearling (1946)



Ah, The Yearling — that classic tale about a boy and his fawn.

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings won the 1939 Pulitzer Prize for the novel, but the play wasn't quite as successful.

It opened in December 1965 and closed after just three performances. Barbra Streisand recorded some of the music; no word on who played the deer.

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