Beat Street, the Broadway bound musical adaptation of the groundbreaking 1984 film, has locked in its principal creative team. The Wiz’s Schele Williams will direct, Hell’s Kitchen’s Kristoffer Diaz is writing the book, and Jason Michael Webb, known for his work on Choir Boy, MJ: The Musical, and the upcoming Purple Rain, joins as music supervisor, arranger, and orchestrator. They join Nas, who was announced earlier as the project’s key musical contributor.
Nas, the Grammy winning rapper, is composing new material for the production and expanding on the film’s original soundtrack. The announcement follows a 40th anniversary screening of Beat Street at the Tribeca Film Festival, where Nas first spoke about signing on. He called the film more than just a movie, describing how it helped spread hip hop culture across the country and the world, and said stepping into musical theater for the first time to help carry that legacy forward felt like an honor.
Last month, Nas, Williams, Diaz, and Webb ran a 29 hour workshop to begin developing the stage adaptation. Casting details and a production timeline are expected to be announced in the coming months.
Beat Street follows a group of aspiring young artists in the South Bronx, a graffiti writer, a DJ, and a break dancer, chasing their dreams inside the emerging hip hop scene while navigating the harder realities of city life. The original film helped define early hip hop on screen, capturing breaking, DJing, MCing, and graffiti art at a moment when few movies took the culture seriously. Its influence has been cited by artists ranging from Ice-T and Ice Cube to LL Cool J and Lin-Manuel Miranda.
The 1984 film featured a lineup of hip hop pioneers including Doug E. Fresh, DJ Kool Herc, Afrika Bambaataa and the Sonic Force, the Treacherous Three, the New York City Breakers, Rock Steady Crew, and Grandmaster Melle Mel and the Furious Five. It starred Rae Dawn Chong, Guy Davis, and Jon Chardiet, and was directed by Stan Lathan and produced by Harry Belafonte and David V. Picker. Its soundtrack, released across two volumes and produced by Arthur Baker, became one of the first rap albums to go gold.
The Broadway production will be produced by Richard Fearn, Arthur Baker, Michael Holman, and Peter Bittenbender in association with Mass Appeal. Baker and Holman both produced the original film. ShowTown Theatricals will serve as general managers, with Nathan Gehan and Jamison Scott of ShowTown Productions serving as executive producers.