Sex, drugs and lad-mag shenanigans are looking to make an unlikely move from the frat house to a Broadway house, with a stage adaptation of Tucker Max’s controversy-baiting book “I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell” gearing up for a developmental Off Broadway run later this year and intended as a prelude to a Broadway berth.
Called “I Hope They Serve Beer on Broadway,” it’s a project that seems to stand in direct opposition to the conventional wisdom regarding what works at the legit B.O., a market dominated by middle-aged female ticketbuyers and generally considered a tough sell for the straight-guy demo.
That’s the point, according to Christopher Carter Sanderson, the “Beer on Broadway” director and dramaturg who’s also founded his own LLC to attract partners and funds to the project. The a.d. of Gotham’s longstanding Gorilla Rep, Sanderson said he’s positioning the project to do what many other commercial titles and nonprofit orgs also attempt: Entice new audiences to the theater.
He added there won’t be any nudity or live sex in the show, in which a cast of five men and five women will enact, with some liberties, the drunken-lothario adventures recounted in Max’s series of books and in the 2009 film version of “I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell.”
Timeline would see the show bow at an Off Broadway space (with a bar) in May or June of this year in a one-night-per-week run that aims to attract stag-party sales in the same way distaff-skewing titles look to draw bachelorette biz.
The proposed Broadway production would be capitalized at around $6 million, according to Sanderson.
