Melissa Etheridge to Pen Score for New Mystic Pizza Musical

Two-time Grammy-winning rocker Melissa Etheridge will write the score for a new musical adaptation of the 1988 romantic comedy Mystic Pizza, the film that famously marked the major film debut of Julia Roberts. The stage project, announced today by Lively McCabe Entertainment, will be directed by Gordon Greenberg, who will cowrite the book with Sas Goldberg, based on Amy Holden Jones's original screenplay.

Mystic Pizza follows the coming of age of three young women working as waitresses at a local pizza parlor in Mystic, Connecticut. Struggling within a local class structure that segregates the immigrant working class from the country club set, the women strive to define themselves beyond the shadow of their families and the men who pursue them.

"MGM's Mystic Pizza is a seminal film for an entire generation of young people looking to distinguish themselves in a rapidly changing world," said Greenberg in a statement. "Adapting Amy Holden Jones's original screenplay for the stage with rock icon Melissa Etheridge, a beacon of strength and raw musical energy, and the brilliantly hilarious Sas Goldberg, is a dream collaboration on a story that is as relevant today as it was when we all first experienced it. Featuring three strong young women at its core, and set in a community of immigrants dealing with traditionally limited expectations amid shifting class dynamics, it provides us with sparkly characters and a highly compelling world."

While the musical will mark Etheridge's Broadway composing debut, she made her Broadway performing debut in 2011 as St. Jimmy in Green Day's rock opera, American Idiot, when she temporarily replaced Billie Joe Armstrong.

Greenberg both directed and penned the book for the 2016 stage adaptation of Irving Berlin's Holiday Inn and previously performed on Broadway in the 1995 revival of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying. Goldberg made her Broadway performing debut in 2017 in Joshua Harmon's Significant Other, and has sold and developed television scripts and pilots at NBC, Fox, Sony, Warner Brothers, and Bravo. She most recently wrote a pilot for NBC with Jeffrey Seller (Hamilton, Rent) and Flody Suarez (The Cher Show) producing.

Mystic Pizza will be published and licensed by Concord Theatricals. Production plans and the remainder of the creative team for the musical, currently in development, will be announced shortly.