Michael Arden Leads The Lost Boys Musical to 12 Tony Nominations
Michael Arden says the lost boys musical is built to honor the movie while still working for Broadway. The stage adaptation of the 1987 cult-classic film has 12 Tony nominations and a reported $25 million budget, a combination that puts it among the season’s most closely watched new productions.
Arden told the theater crowd he had never seen the movie before agents and producers asked him about the project. After watching it with his husband, he thought, “Well, this is silly and fun and not what I expected at all.”
Arden and the movie
Arden won a Tony Award for best musical last year after turning a musical about two robots into a winner, and that track record helps explain why this assignment landed with him. He is now directing The Lost Boys while also holding two Tony nominations tied to the production, one for directing and one for shared lighting design credit.
He said the film’s appeal sits in the story underneath the spectacle: a family trying to start over and stay together amid the winds of change and growing up. That is the material he is carrying into a show built for a far longer night than a 90-minute movie, with Broadway audiences sitting through two and a half hours.
Broadway scale and seating
Arden said theatergoers span “10-year-old kids” and people in their “60s and 70s,” and he wants the show to work across that spread. His own guiding rule is direct: “You have to tune out the noise and listen to how people react in the theater.”
He also put the adaptation problem plainly: “Theater is an entirely different art form, and it has different requirements.” That is the friction point for any film-to-stage transfer, especially one carrying a $25 million price tag and the pressure of 12 Tony nominations before the dust has settled.
12 Tony nominations on Sunday
The Lost Boys is competing for best musical at the Tony Awards alongside Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York), Titanique and Schmigadoon!. That field makes the show’s nominations a real test of whether a vampire musical can hold its own against the rest of Broadway’s musical slate.
Arden’s answer is to keep the adaptation welcoming rather than rigid. “I think it’s about honoring the movie, highlighting its best moments and letting people feel taken care of – that the thing they’ve loved as a part of their lives is cherished by us.”
