The lengths to which Intellectual Property can be stretched all in the name of the game of not having to hit the whiteboard, sketchbook, or canvas for an original concept is quite impressive. Not only have some multiverses and reboots kept ideas from the ’80s and ’90s floating around like dinghies with last-minute houseboat addendums, but there is now the oddly common occurrence of films and television shows, ones that for which a sequel would have felt unfathomable, being susceptible to being turned into musicals. It’s certainly an interesting concept, adapting television shows and films that were not created with music and lyrics in mind and injecting them with songs for a niche audience. 

Sure, School of Rock seemed like a natural transition, but Mean Girls, Heathers, Beetlejuice, and Spongebob Squarepants? All four aforementioned film/TV-to-musical adaptations have proved commercially and critically successful, some with rave reviews. So, the people behind these adaptations are certainly putting their money where their mouths are. 

The Color Purple was adapted for Broadway in 2005. It was instantly a success, accruing 11 Tony Award nominations in 2006, $103 million in box office sales by the close of its initial run in 2008, and receiving a smash hit revival in 2015. The musical is now being adapted for film under the same name for a December 25, 2023 release.

History and Plot

The story’s lineage must first be detailed to get to the musical film adaptation of The Color Purple. The initial source to all of the adaptations is Alice Walker’s 1982 novel of the same name, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1983, making Walker The first black woman to win the prize. 

Steven Spielberg made the first film adaptation in 1985 with a cast that included Whoopi Goldberg, Oprah Winfrey, Danny Glover, Rae Dawn Chong, and Laurence Fishburn, among others. The film was commercially and critically successful, grossing $98 million in box office sales on a $15 million budget and garnering ten Academy Award nominations, notably winning none of them. A musical adaptation of the book and film opened on Broadway in 2005 and ran until 2008. The musical had a revival in 2015 and ran until 2017, winning a 2016 Tony Award for Best Revival of a Musical. In 2018, Warner Bros. announced making a film adaptation based on the Broadway musical.

The musical, novel, and previous film adaptation follows Celie, an African-American woman in the South, over several decades from the early to mid-twentieth century. Celie suffers abuse at the hands of her father and, later, her husband, Mister, building bonds along the way with several other women struggling against the men and prejudice in their lives.