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Lin-Manuel Miranda and Eisa Davis’s concept album based on The Warriors, the cult novel and film about warring New York gangs, is to become a Broadway musical next year.
The album, Warriors, was released to critical acclaim in 2024 and followed the eponymous Coney Island clan’s odyssey back to the Bronx after being falsely accused of killing the leader of the city’s biggest gang. The original story was written by Sol Yurick, whose 1965 book was inspired by Xenophon’s ancient epic Anabasis, and it became a Walter Hill action film in 1979.
Miranda told the Guardian upon the album’s release that a stage version would be “enormous fun”. Now, Warriors has lined up a home, the Lunt-Fontanne theatre, for a spring opening. Andy Blankenbuehler, who choreographed Miranda’s smash hit Hamilton, will co-direct with Jenny Koons, and will also choreograph the show.
“There’s one line that’s on the album that’s also in the musical, which is ‘What do you do when they kill everything you believe in?’” Davis said in an interview with the New York Times on Tuesday. “And I think that that question is a question that all of us are wrestling with in the world right now.” Davis and Miranda said that the show would feature a cast of about 20 and have a book rather than being a sung-through musical.
The pair scored a coup in assembling an exceptional cast for the 26-track album including Lauryn Hill, Marc Anthony, Shenseea and a host of other singers across multiple genres. Each of New York’s five boroughs is represented by top rappers including Nas and Busta Rhymes on the opening number, Survive the Night. It’s the kind of lineup possible on an album but not night after night on stage. “We invited all these incredible artists we would never have got for eight shows a week,” Davis told the Guardian in 2024.
Casting for the show is yet to be announced. In Miranda and Davis’s gender-switched version of the story, the seven Warriors are all women, sung on the album by Kenita Miller, Sasha Hutchings, Phillipa Soo, Aneesa Folds, Amber Gray, Gizel Jiménez, Jasmine Cephas Jones, many of them Hamilton alumni, while Julia Harriman is their new recruit, Mercy. The story’s main villain, Luther, known for taunting the Warriors by beckoning them to “come out to play”, is performed by Australian metalcore singer Kim Dracula on the album.
Miranda’s Hamilton has run on Broadway since 2015. He is directing a film version of Dave Malloy’s musical Octet with a cast including Rachel Zegler and Amanda Seyfried.
