NBC’s live bradcast of The Sound of Music last weekend was greeted with much the same attitude as Sharknado: a far fetched concept (The Sound of Music without Julie Andrews?), but an ambitious undertaking nonetheless (a live-broadcast stage musical?), likely to be entertaining only in the degree to which it might be a total trainwreck.
And the show delivered, both to folks looking to revel in its technical glitches and lackluster casting (if you didn’t catch it the first time, you can catch an encore this weekend), and to NBC executives who quite enjoyed those 18.6 million viewers who turned their ears and eyeballs to the program. So, of course, they’re planning more.
NBC Chairman Bob Greenblatt told Deadline, that the success of next year’s broadcast “hinges on finding a title that can be rated G, as was The Sound of Music, and has loads of very familiar tunes – and on securing the services of another music star with a large fan base, like [Carrie] Underwood.” So there you have it folks: all your hate tweeting about The Sound of Music means we get to do it all again in a year. Trust me, it’s not going to be that difficult for NBC to find another G rated musical production with songs that everybody knows. They could just do Grease.
Wait, is Grease G-rated? Do pregnancy scares count as more PG than Nazis? Well, anyway, they could do Bye Bye Birdie. I’m pretty sure there’s nothing untoward in there. But part of me hopes that there’s an extended mixup and NBC winds up producing a stage musical version of Rosemary’s Baby. See, NBC has just greenlit a four hour miniseries based on the 1967 novel that inspired the 1968 film that will make you never want to have children or talk to your neighbors ever again. Come on, NBC mail room interns, just mix up some internal memos. I know you can make this happen.
