Heathers: The Musical has swept the English-speaking musical world. After runs in Los Angeles and New York, the theatrical musical made its way over the pond to London, where it found a completely new fanbase. Based on the movie Heathers, which came out in the 1980s, Heathers: The Musical combines darker subjects with comedy, as well as relevant, real-life problems youths are facing. With great performances, this is not one to miss. The beloved musical will find a new home on the streaming platform Roku, where it will be available to stream for free on September 16, 2022.
MovieWeb sat down with the director of Heathers: The Musical, Andy Fickman, to chat about the production.
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Here Since the Very Beginning
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MovieWeb: How did you originally become attached to this project?
Andy Fickman: In 2005, I had a movie coming out based on a musical called Reefer Madness!, it was going on to Showtime and at Sundance. My partner on that, Kevin Murphy, and I had been approached on whether we would be interested in turning Heathers into a musical. Kevin and I sat down, talked about, and we went to a long-time friend of ours, Larry O’Keefe, we were looking to partner with. From that moment, we were able to sit down with Dan Waters, who wrote the original movie, and Michael Lehmann, who directed Heathers, and Denise Di Novi, who produced it.
MovieWeb: You’ve worked on Heathers: The Musical ever since it originated in Los Angeles. How has it changed and evolved throughout the different productions?
Andy Fickman: In Los Angeles, we did a lot of developmental readings first. So we made changes during those readings, new songs, new ways to tell the story. When we got to the Los Angeles run, we were feeling pretty good and had some new stuff. By the time we went to New York, which was very shortly after the LA run, we made changes. We came down, did our New York album, had our amateur rights available, and then all of the sudden we got a call from Andrew Lloyd Webber’s theater The Other Palace. They said, “How about coming to London?” Then we got to London, and by the time we opened the show in 2018, we had done some significant changes. We added songs, changed “Blue,” tightened the book and did work on scenes. A lot has changed from when we first started looking at a blank page.
MovieWeb: Heathers is a pretty dark, heavy musical. What were the challenges that came with making the script come to life?
We loved the movie, so we didn’t want to short change the movie. Our challenge was we wanted to end slightly different, with some hope and redemption, and Dan Waters was on board with that. As we were finding our balance, working with actors, my challenge has always been how far we can tip into that darkness and when do you start to tip. For some characters [it doesn’t work] if you go too early.
A Dedicated Fanbase
MovieWeb: What did you enjoy most about working on Heathers: The Musical?
Andy Fickman: The biggest thing I love are the fans, who we call corn nuts. That’s what I love the most: how it’s touched people’s lives. It’s become a part of their world. We have fans in the UK who have seen it thirty, forty times. We become friends with them. In the same way, it has helped people emotionally at times. That’s been the greatest part of the journey.
MovieWeb: Did you anticipate such a reaction originally?
Andy Fickman: We bet wrong. We thought when we started in the States, Heathers the movie wasn’t big or popular, it was a cult movie, so we thought the audience was older people who remembered the eighties and had nostalgia. That’s what we thought. We got those people, then, all of the sudden, we see teenagers come in costumes. Now it’s their show. It’s so much their show, and I wish we could say we planned this, but none of that happened.
MovieWeb: There has been immense success with filming theatrical musicals like movies and putting them on streaming platforms in recent years. What are your thoughts on that?
Andy Fickman: It used to be for the longest time that filming theater was bad. You can really integrate it and make it an exciting venture. We wanted to include the audience in ours. We wanted people to feel what it was like to see our show. I’m looking forward to more opportunities, but I never want it to feel like a substitute for going in and seeing the show. Come From Away [on Apple TV+] is a great example, you feel like you’re there and it’s so emotional.
MovieWeb: Finally: What’s next for you?
Andy Fickman: One True Loves, which will star Phillipa Soo and Simu Liu, will come out early next year. I’m working on a new musical based on the movie Thirteen Going on Thirty and developing out of the UK. The original people who wrote the movie are writing the book. I’m very excited about that.
