Mel Brooks is bringing Young Frankenstein Live! musical to ABC

U.S. television networks caught musical fever in the last decade, turning Peter Pan, The Little Mermaid, Rent, The Sound of Music, The Wiz, Hairspray, Grease, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, and A Christmas Story (how many people even realized there was a musical based on A CHRISTMAS STORY) into special broadcast events, many of them live. This trend shows no sign of stopping, but luckily the latest live musical broadcast event to be announced is one of the most interesting ones yet.

Deadline has learned that Mel Brooks will be producing Young Frankenstein Live! for ABC. Cast and airdate have not been revealed, but the musical is expected to reach the air sometime this fall. I would say that October seems like the perfect month for it.

Young Frankenstein Live! will, of course, be a performance of the musical based on Brooks's 1974 comedy classic YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN, which played like a hilarious follow-up to the Universal Frankenstein films even though it was released by 20th Century Fox. Brooks crafted YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN with Gene Wilder, and it was clear that they were very familiar with those Universal movies.

In case you weren't aware that there was a Young Frankenstein musical, it does indeed exist – Brooks created the musical with Thomas Meehan in 2007. Brooks and Meehan had previously worked together to make a musical based on Brooks's 1967 film THE PRODUCERS. The Broadway presentation of Young Frankenstein ran from November 2007 through January 2009. The musical was directed and choreographed by Susan Stroman, and the original cast included Roger Bart, Megan Mullally, Christopher Fitzgerald, Sutton Foster, and Andrea Martin.

The film YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN had the following synopsis: 

Mel Brooks' monstrously crazy tribute to Mary Shelley's classic pokes hilarious fun at just about every Frankenstein movie ever made. Summoned by a will to his late grandfather's castle in Transylvania, young Dr. Frankenstein (Gene Wilder) soon discovers the scientist's step-by-step manual explaining how to bring a corpse to life. Assisted by the hunchbacked Igor (Marty Feldman) and the curvaceous Inga (Teri Garr), he creates a monster (Peter Boyle) who only wants to be loved.

I haven't watched most of the musicals that have aired in recent years, but I will be watching Young Frankenstein Live!