Pretty Woman the Musical heads to Australia with songs by rocker Bryan Adams

Midway through his current Australian tour, Bryan Adams has dropped some huge news specifically for Aussie audiences.

When rock superstar Bryan Adams first floated the concept of turning rom com blockbuster Pretty Woman to the Broadway stage, Disney told him “we will never, ever make this into a musical.”

Now 18 years later, Adams has launched the Australian season of Pretty Woman: The Musical, which will open in Brisbane in October.

Currently on his So Happy It Hurts tour, the Run To You star said the idea was first planted around 2007 by a former dancer girlfriend, who was performing in the West End production of Dirty Dancing in 2007.

When she said she wanted to see the Julia Roberts and Richard Gere rom com made for the stage, the rocker thought it was a “really good idea” but was rejected by Disney who are co-owners of the film.

Bryan Adams got rejected the first time he tried to float a musical idea. Picture: Getty.

Almost a decade later, a Broadway director friend visited Adams backstage after a concert in New York and said, “You really must do a musical. Why haven’t you done a musical?”

The rocker shared his failure to get the green light fir Pretty Woman and the director shocked him by revealing a musical adaptation was in development.

Introductions to the producers were made and Adams and his longtime songwriter partner Jim Vallance scrambled to write a clutch of songs for their “audition”.

“When I went to the meeting in new York, Jim and I had prepared three songs, maybe four, as a good start and one of them was Welcome to Hollywood, which is the opening number,” he said.

“And that was enough to seal the deal.”

The famous Pretty Woman outfit recreated for the stage. Picture: Supplied.

But their work had just begun. Adams said unlike penning his own rock tracks, writing for a musical is “like songwriting by committee.”

“It was ever changing and there were moments of exasperation and moments of elation and it was just the process of Broadway,” he said.

“Recently I’ve been speaking to some people about doing another musical, and I got on the phone with these two producers in New York and the first thing they asked me was ‘Why would you want to do another musical?’”

Well, because the first one was “Big. Huge”, for starters. The film turned musical formula has been a staple on the world’s stages for decades with Beetlejuice, The Bodyguard, Sister Act and Muriel’s Wedding among the successful productions.

Adams co-wrote songs for the musical. Picture: Supplied.

Pretty Woman: The Musical opened in Chicago in 2018 before it transferred to Broadway and ran for a year. It has since toured through Europe, the UK and Ireland and North America.

It will make its Australian debut at Brisbane’s QPAC Lyric Theatre in October and is likely to travel to other cities after its premiere run.

The launch comes after Adams’ tour kickoff in Perth on Sunday was cancelled because of fears a sewer fatberg would block up the venue toilets after wastewater overflowed at nearby properties.

“Last night’s concert could not proceed due to an external Perth Water Corporation issue, which was unable to be fixed in time,” Frontier Touring posted in a statement.

“The issue, which impacted all of Wellington Street, meant that it was deemed unsafe for patrons to enter RAC Arena.”

Adams plays his final concert on the tour at Melbourne’s Rid Laver Arena on Saturday.

A waitlist to access tickets is available via www.prettywomanthemusical.com.au

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Originally published as Pretty Woman the Musical heads to Australia with songs by rocker Bryan Adams