"A Strange Loop" and "Company" lead the musical nods for the 75th Annual Tony Award Nominations

by Patrick Ball

A STRANGE LOOP leads the nominations. Photo © The New York Times / Sara Krulwich

Pulitzer winner A Strange Loop led the Tony nominations this morning but only by 1. Paradise Square a period musical about NYC's five points neighborhood, and the Michael Jackson musical MJ each scored 10 nominations. While Stephen Sondheim's Company was the clear frontrunner among the Revivals with 9 nominations. Voters nearly shut out two big glitzy musicals (Funny Girl and Mrs Doubtfire scored just 1 nomination each!) and the year's priciest ticket had mixed results with The Music Man scoring just 6 nominations. If you believe nomination counts predict winners (they do sometimes) your big winners in June will be the popular gender bent revival of Company, the box office struggling revival of for colored girls (which could get a big boost from these nods), and for original musicals and plays, A Strange Loop  and the already-closed The Lehman Trilogy respectively. 

The nominations after the jump include a lot of well loved stars (Jackman, Foster, Rashad, Negga, Crystal, Dratch, Aduba, Winningham) though several other "names" were snubbed (SJP, Feldstein, Craig) were left out...

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Which shows will be Tony Award nominated next week?

by Patrick Ball

Daniel Craig and Ruth Negga in a modern "Macbeth"

It’s only been 8 months since last year’s long delayed Tony Awards, but it’s time to celebrate the best of The Great White Way once more. This year’s crop represents the first full season since 18 months back when Covid chaos  closed the industry that depends on gathering patrons en masse in close quarters. Though at times it was a bumpy road back to anything approaching normal for Broadway, come Tony season we actually have a pretty robust roster of new shows ready for their turn in the awards season sun.

Nominations will be announced by Tina: The Tina Turner Musical’s Tony Winning Adrienne Warren and Joshua Henry on Monday May 9th. The Tonys will be broadcast live June 12th on CBS and Paramount+ and will be hosted by our newly minted Oscar winner and former Tony nominee Ariana Debose. 

Unlike the Oscars, the Tonys are in a bit of a world unto themselves in the landscape of theater awards...

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I Wanna Link With Somebody

• Vanity Fair Jamie Lee Curtis answers the Proust questionnaire
• Esquire Candid interview with Josh Charles who talks his HBO show We Own This City as well as delivering Aaron Sorkin's dialogue in the past
• EW Ewan McGregor and Mary Elizabeth Winstead got married over the weekend
• Slate on the sexual landscape of TV at the moment. interesting take

Viola Davis, Singin' in the Rain, The Northman, CinemaCon and more after the jump...

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Red Flag Alert: "Wicked" will now be two movies long!

by Nathaniel R

Though we've been anxiously awaiting the Wicked movie for (checks IBDB) 18 years, 6 months, and 6 days, we are suddenly dreading it. We were fairly pleased with the casting and the director choice but this new information is a major red flag. In keeping with Hollywood's money-grubbing franchise mania in which they attempt to wrestle as much money from consumers as possible even if they have to pad the stories or extend them well past their breaking point -- popularized by finales that were cleaved in half to guarantee an extra billion in ticket revenue (see Twilight and Harry Potter) or three movies based on a single book (The Hobbit) -- they've decided to make Wicked a two part movie.

Director Jon M Chu (Crazy Rich Asians, In the Heights) writes...

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I'll Link To That

• AV Club as if the Gilded Age didn't have enough Broadway stars already, Robert Sean Leonard and Laura Benanti are joining the cast for Season 2
• IndieWire It's Batman vs Spider-Man on PVOD charts (but the iTunes chart is fairly interesting for its older titles like Easter hits like Ten Commandments and Passion of the Christ)
• Cartoon Brew Across the Spider-Verse has been pushed back until summer 2023 so yes...
• TFE... we've already had to update the Oscar charts for Best Animated Feature
• AV Club Andy Serkis is going to direct an animated Animal Farm

More after the jump including honors for Lily Tomlin, Liza Minnelli's feelings about her Oscar apperance, Danny Elfman at Coachella, The Northman and more...

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