Prince’s ‘Purple Rain’ is Heading to Broadway
The late music icon’s blockbuster 1984 movie is the basis for a new musical experience onstage.
RITZ CLUB Photo of PRINCE, Prince performing on stage - Purple Rain Tour .
Photo by Richard E. Aaron/Redferns.
Prince’s iconic 1984 movie and soundtrack album is heading to Broadway. Purple Rain has been adapted for the stage after an initial 2025 out-of-town production in the singer’s own hometown of Minneapolis. The project is set to officially premiere on Broadway in spring 2027, with previews starting March 12 and opening April 12 at the Majestic Theatre.
“Everything that Prince did in his career was so theatrical,” producer Orin Wolf said to Billboard. “So it’s just an organic move from the film to the stage.”
Wolf has produced Tony-winning musicals Once and The Band’s Visit, as well as recent acclaimed productions like Illinoise and Buena Vista Social Club. Purple Rain will feature director Saheem Ali and Tony-winning music supervisor, arranger and orchestrator Jason Michael Webb, who also served as music director of the hit Michael Jackson musical, MJ.
“There are a lot of different ways in which musicians’ catalogs get put into story form, but it’s very rare to have a story where the impulse came from the musician himself or herself,” Wolf says. “But Purple Rain really was something that came from Prince’s own imagination — not just the song and the album, but the story of The Kid, the idea of telling a story about what it was like to grow up in the mid ’80s in Minneapolis and to come up in that scene. A lot of things were inspired by his own experience as an artist and his life, but truly, this was an invention of his, and that was fascinating to me.”
The stage adaptation will feature over 20 of Prince’s iconic hits, including Purple Rain mainstays “When Doves Cry,” “I Would Die 4 U,” “Take Me With You” and “The Beautiful Ones.”
The show’s official logline reads: “Minneapolis, 1984. A new era of music television is creating overnight stars. A magnetic young performer known as ‘The Kid’ seems like the perfect frontman to lead his bandmates to stardom. But when his past threatens everything he’s built, he’ll have to sing his way out of the darkness and into the spotlight where he belongs.”
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