‘Weird Al’ Yankovic Musical Is Heading to Broadway

Broadway is about to get a whole lot weirder. Dare to Be Stupid: The Weird Al Musical, a stage musical built around the songs of five-time Grammy winner “Weird Al” Yankovic, is officially in development — and the team assembled to bring it to life is genuinely stacked.

Tony Award-winner Alex Timbers, the director behind the smash hit Moulin Rouge! The Musical, is set to direct. The book is being written by Tony-nominated duo Scott Brown and Anthony King — the team behind Gutenberg! The Musical! and the Broadway hit Beetlejuice — alongside Yankovic himself. Producing is Seaview, the Tony Award-winning powerhouse behind some of the most talked-about shows in recent memory.

The musical will pull from Yankovic’s unparalleled four-decade catalog — songs that have parodied, celebrated, and cheerfully outlasted virtually every genre and cultural moment of the modern era. Confirmed titles include “White & Nerdy” (his spin on Chamillionaire’s “Ridin’”), “Amish Paradise” (Coolio’s “Gangsta’s Paradise”), “Eat It” (Michael Jackson’s “Beat It”), “Smells Like Nirvana” (Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit”), and “Like a Surgeon” (Madonna’s “Like a Virgin”).

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Yankovic, characteristically, could not be more on-brand about the whole thing. “Ever since I was a middle-aged man, I’ve always wanted to be a part of the New York theatre community,” he said in a statement. “Plus, the one thing people always say about Broadway is that it’s ‘severely lacking in Weird Al-based entertainment,’ and I think this musical should fix that problem immediately.”

A Dream Project for Everyone Involved

For Timbers, this one is personal. “I first fell in love with Al’s music with the release of ‘Dare to Be Stupid’ and have remained an avid fan ever since,” he said. “Now, it’s a dream come true to work with one of my comedy heroes bringing an original story set to his beloved songbook to the stage. What Al, Anthony, and Scott are creating is unexpected, subversive, meta, and hilarious — and I can’t wait for the world to experience it.”

Seaview CEO Greg Nobile was equally enthusiastic. “Dare to Be Stupid feels like the kind of musical that only comes around once in a while — wildly original, deeply funny, and powered by the unmistakable heart that has made ‘Weird Al’ Yankovic a singular voice in American culture,” he said. “Beneath the absurdity and the joy, is a show about creativity, individuality, and the freedom to be unapologetically yourself.”

The combination of Timbers’ theatrical spectacle instincts, Brown and King’s gift for absurdist comedy (anyone who’s seen Beetlejuice on Broadway knows exactly what that means), and Yankovic’s four decades of pop culture subversion feels like an almost unreasonably good fit. This is a jukebox musical, yes — but one built on songs that were already themselves a form of theatrical performance art.

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A production timeline and the rest of the creative team are still to come. But given the names already attached, this one is going to be hard to ignore once it starts moving.