A musical is in the works of the 1985 teen comedy Girls Just Want to Have Fun starring Sarah Jessica Parker and Helen Hunt. Cyndi Lauper's iconic song of the same name inspired the cult film directed by Alan Metter and also starring Lee Montgomery, Morgan Woodward, Jonathan Silverman, and Shannen Doherty.
Variety reports, “The stage show is based on the film’s screenplay by Amy Spies and features a score of 1980s chart-toppers, including the Cyndi Lauper hit that inspired the title. Girls Just Want to Have Fun tells the story of Janey, a high school gymnast whose strict Army colonel father instructs her to stay out of the spotlight. But when she moves to a new town and meets the bold and supportive Lynne, she disobeys her dad for the first time to enter a TV dance competition. Although the movie wasn’t a box office hit, it eventually became a cult favorite.”
The Girls Just Want to Have Fun musical marks the first project between theater development company Lively McCabe Entertainment and music publisher Primary Wave Music. Jennifer Werner, who previously worked on The Book of Mormon, will direct.
“This is a dream project that our team has been working on securing for quite some time, so we’re immensely grateful to Amy Spies for entrusting us with her iconic story and characters and for her collaboration on bringing them to the stage,” says Lively McCabe CEO Michael Barra. “And to be able to partner with this brilliant trio of creators as well as our friends at Primary Wave with their incredible catalog of '80s chart-toppers, is just icing on the cake.”
Cyndi Lauper's “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” Became a Feminist Anthem
“Girls Just Want to Have Fun,” the first single from Cyndi Lauper‘s debut album, She's So Unusual, became an international hit and one of the defining songs of the 1980s. Robert Hazard wrote the song's lyrics four years before Lauper's album, but she changed some key wording to the make the song about female empowerment instead of having “bedroom fun.” For whatever reason, Lauper reportedly did not want to appear in the film or have her version of the song used, so the snippets heard in Girls Just Want to Have Fun are not the original song. Since that time, Lauper won a Tony for composing the Broadway musical Kinky Boots. Hopefully the Grammy-Tony-Emmy winner changes her tune for the upcoming musical inspired by the song that made her famous.
As for Girls Just Want to Have Fun screenwriter Spies, she says, “I am excited that this great team is bringing to the stage my story of empowering female friendships and young women coming into their own.”