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The television cast of Nashville, which is being adapted into a musical.
The television cast of Nashville, which is being adapted into a musical.

Is TV’s Nashville Coming to Broadway?

Fans of the popular ABC/CMT series Nashville might be excited to find the show will have a new life on Broadway. The series, which ran on ABC from 2012 to 2016 and CMT from 2016-2018 was canceled after a six-season run, but it appears that it will find new life as a musical aiming for Broadway. Tony Award-winning producer Scott Delman (producer of American Idiot, Hello, Dolly!, and Mean Girls) has acquired the theatrical rights to the show and, in collaboration with Lionsgate, will bring Nashville to the stage.

In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Delman shared his thoughts on the gestating musical, “Nashville, with its complex, relatable characters and sweeping emotional gestures, has all of the narrative elements that I look for in great theatrical source material. From that rich DNA, we will be building an original story with entirely original music, written by major Nashville and Broadway songwriters. We are particularly excited to deliver Broadway’s first score of true contemporary country music – a genre that has exploded with mainstream audiences in recent years.”

Nashville will be developed as a musical, with an all-new score written to capture the stories of music stars and singer-songwriter hopefuls working toward their dreams in the city that became the place to be in the competitive world of country music. The series, which was created by Callie Khouri, starred Connie Britton, Hayden Panettiere, Charlie Esten, Eric Close, Clare Bowen, Jonathan Jackson, and Sam Palladio.  A parade of celebrities also appeared on the series as themselves including Brad Paisley, Katie Couric, Kelly Clarkson, Conan O’Brien, Luke Bryan, and Michelle Obama.

Mark Robinson is the author of the two-volume encyclopedia The World of Musicals, The Disney Song Encyclopedia, and The Encyclopedia of Television Theme Songs. He maintains a theater and entertainment blog at markrobinsonwrites.com.