Twenty years after they helped bring hip-hop to a wider audience, Run-DMC may be heading to Broadway. This week, the group's surviving members will meet with a Hollywood producer to discuss plans to make a musical of their story.
The project is headed by Paula Wagner, producer of Mission: Impossible and Valkyrie. A life-long Run-DMC fan, Wagner hopes to transform their pioneering hip-hop into blockbuster musical theatre. "[Run-DMC's] lyrics and music are infectious," she told the New York Times. "It's vibrant, it's alive. Who they are and what they did was a culturally defining moment. It embraced everybody."
Wagner wants to tell the story behind Run-DMC's songs. "Their rise to fame is innately theatrical," she said. "[It] speaks to everybody." To realise her long-time labour of love, Wagner is meeting with Joseph "Rev Run" Simmons, Darryl "DMC" McDaniels, and representatives for the estate of Jason "Jam-Master Jay" Mizell, who was murdered in 2002, on the verge of a Run-DMC reunion.
"I couldn't be more thrilled to be working with them," Wagner said. Originally an actress, she is now known for her association with Tom Cruise. At one time Cruise's agent, Wagner now runs his United Artists production company and over the last decade has produced movies including Vanilla Sky, The Last Samurai and War of the Worlds.
But it's with Run-DMC that Wagner hopes to make her Broadway debut. The group formed in Hollis, Queens in 1983 and became one of hip-hop's first real crossovers, bringing rap to the mainstream. They teamed up with Aerosmith to release one of the 1980s biggest hits, a remake of Walk This Way, and were inducted into the Rock'n'roll Hall of Fame earlier this year.
If the Run-DMC rap opera goes ahead, Wagner said most of the music will come from the group's back catalogue, with additional music provided by an outside composer or "very possibly" Rev Run and DMC. And though Wagner might lack theatre experience, she said she has "a number of good friends". Perhaps Tom Cruise is trying on gold chains and leather jackets.
