Motown Records founder Berry Gordy Jr. wrote the book for "Motown the Musical," and the play will be staged in New York next spring.
It will be directed by Charles Randolph-Wright ("Ruined," "Sophisticated Ladies," "Through the Night"), and the producers are Kevin McCollum ("Rent," "Avenue Q," "In the Heights") and Sony Entertainment chairman and CEO Doug Morris, a longtime music business friend of Gordy's. The musical will be presented at a Nederlander theater to be announced later.
It's a project that Gordy has been working on for years, driven by the need to tell the Motown story himself after seeing pieces of it spun into Broadway gold as "Dreamgirls." That musical (and later, movie) was a heavily fictionalized account of Motown's Supremes, casting what Gordy and others felt was a pejorative slant on the Detroit label's story, according to Susan Whitall of the Detroit News.
Gordy's own life story is tightly wound into the musical's book.
Other producers have tried to use Motown music in Broadway productions, but it's been difficult to get permission. Gordy will of course have no such issue, and there will be many Motown hits used in the musical.
