NEW YORK, April 30 (UPI) — Film and theater star Patrick Wilson says he grew up loving Joel Schumacher’s classic 1987 vampire film, The Lost Boys, but he really started thinking about how to bring the story to the stage when there was renewed interest in the movie during the COVID-19 pandemic lock-downs of 2020-21.
“There are probably people here, maybe close to my age, that were teenagers, the age of the Frog brothers at the time [the movie came out],” Wilson, 52, recently told the crowd at New York Comic Con.
“When this movie came out, it really changed the whole way that we just viewed vampires and how cool it became and what it really meant to be an outsider, right?” the actor added.
“Because a lot of us that were teens during that time, if you felt different than everybody else, this was kind of the movie [for you] that hit the horror, the comedy, the melodrama and, of course, they just looked so damn cool.”
A stage musical based on the movie — and produced by Wilson and his life-long friends James Carpinello and Marcus Chait — opened on Broadway Sunday.
Directed by Michael Arden — whose credits include Parade and Maybe Happy Ending — and written by David Hornsby and Chris Hoch, the production features a cast who plays their own instruments on stage.
The music and lyrics are by the indie pop/rock band The Rescues.
“Perfect weather. Beautiful beaches. And a charming boardwalk… as long as you ignore all the ‘Missing’ posters,” a synopsis of the show said.
“When Lucy (Shoshana Bean) and her two teenage sons move to town in desperate need of a fresh start, they soon uncover the darker side of this sunny coastal community,” the summary continued.
“While Lucy tries to piece her family’s life back together, Michael (LJ Benet) keeps pulling away in search of belonging. As he finds connection with a local rock band and its charismatic leader, his younger brother Sam (Benjamin Pajak) comes face-to-face with a startling reality: When night falls, Michael’s new friends are even more dangerous than they first appeared.”
The show also co-stars Ali Louis Bourzgui as Michael’s frenemy David and Maria Wirries as Star, the woman they both love.
Wilson said he and the rest of the creative team wanted to take the core of what meant so much to them as kids watching the movie in the 1980s and re-invent it for a 21st century audience.
“Our whole mantra the entire time of putting the show together was we wanted to be forward-thinking,” he said.
“We want to be as inclusive as we can. We want to be as daring as we can, as bold,” Wilson added. “As we got together with other people who produce for a living and run the whole musical theater scene, right to our agents, as we were sort of shaping how this show can take place, [exploring] if it’s even possible, one director stood out at the top.”
Arden said the team knew they wanted the show to be “fun, sexy, and, hopefully, life-affirming.”
“We started our casting search and have found the most incredible cast for you,” Arden told the NYCC audience.
“Jason Patric, in the film, as Michael, is like the hottest thing that anyone’s ever seen. I think many of us wanted to join whatever gang he was in. So, that was one thing we knew — we had to find somebody who had that type of charisma,” he added.
“When this young man [Benet] came in to sing this music, everyone just knew immediately that this was the voice that had to be our guide into the world of The Lost Boys. So, he came from L.A. into an audition, flew in on a red eye, sang first in the morning and by the afternoon, we were like, ‘This is our Michael.'”
The movie’s cast also included Kiefer Sutherland, Jamie Gertz, Coreys Haim and Feldman, and Alex Winter.
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