After over 20 years of not paying their landlord, you’d think the Bohemian twenty-somethings of Jonathan Larson’s award-winning musical Rent wouldn’t learned by now. Yet if Fox’s latest addition its upcoming slate of shows is any indication, this sadly isn’t the case because a live broadcast production of the show will accompany a similarly musically-inclined interpretation of A Christmas Story sometime in the near future. And to answer your first question, yes and no — Grease: Live is partially to blame for this.
Why partially, you ask? Because Marc Platt, who produced Grease: Live for Fox last year (along with a Best Picture Oscar-less film you may have heard of), is masterminding the latest live musical charade to grace the airwaves. According to an official press release, the estate of Rent‘s creator, Larson — who died unexpectedly of an aortic aneurysm in 1996 — will executive produce the television special with Platt. Before his death, the writer won a Pulitzer Prize, a Tony Award, and countless other accolades for the acclaimed and popular musical, which was a re-imaging of Italian opera composer Giacomo Puccini’s La bohème.
While Fox announced A Christmas Story would air sometime next December, their announcement regarding Rent refrained from providing a clear timetable for its release.
