Bringing <i>Falsettos</i> Musical from Stage To Movie Screens

The two teams started brainstorming about Falsettos, but it wasn't until the weeks leading up to Christmas 2016 that their latest partnership was solidified. The Falsettos musical play opened at Lincoln Center in Fall 2016 and ran through January. Filming took place the first week of January and will be used for other distribution channels such as the PBS Live from Lincoln Center series, which will air Falsettos this fall.

With a limited window, Schiffman said she and the team at Lincoln Center jumped on the opportunity to bring Falsettos to the big screen and start filming before the show's run ended. Event cinema deals can be difficult to work out too far in advance, in large part because producers don't typically want to create competition for their own shows by offering a cheaper alternative at the movie theater. And even if a show is closing its doors on Broadway, a national tour can potentially interfere with whether the show's creative team feels comfortable competing for those ticket sales.

Schiffman said she needed buy-in from all of the cast and creative team in order to make the project work. First, the producers needed to give their permission, as well as the musical's writers, composers and stage directors. She then had to ink deals with all of the managers representing the show's stars, including Andrew Rannells from HBO's Girls and Christian Borle from Smash, among other actors, sound engineers, makeup artists and costume designers — negotiating on issues such as compensation, billing and residuals.

“All of them have to agree before you're green-lit,” Schiffman said. “You're only as strong as your weakest link. If there's one holdup, or they don't want to do it for artistic reasons or financial reasons, you have to be aware of the fact that this might not happen.”

Schiffman was the primary lawyer for Lincoln Center, but she had help from her in-house lawyers and hired outside counsel for the more intense labor negotiations. Much of the work on the deal was completed in the weeks leading up to Christmas of last year. “There was a lot to be done and we worked through the holiday,” Schiffman said.

Even a deal with CBS, which broadcast the Tony's, had to be papered. Screenvision's EVP of operations and exhibitor relations Darryl Schaffer said that CBS is one of her company's clients, so it was part of the network's on-screen ad buy to have the person introducing the Falsettos cast's performance during the live awards broadcast also announce Lincoln Center's partnership with Screenvision. That announcer happened to be Whoopi Goldberg. “That was a really great way to sort of kick off the process,” Schaffer said.

Lawyers also had to negotiate the number of theaters in which Falsettos would play and how many showings each theater will have. And Schiffman had to have talks with Falsettos lyricist William Finn because some of the show's more profane language had to be changed to comply with the Federal Communications Commission's TV broadcast rules.

Screenvision's Schaffer said negotiations with Lincoln Center went pretty smoothly, because “all of us had the same goal of trying to bring the musical to as many theaters as possible.” Plus, there was already a deal template in place from Screenvision and Lincoln Center's previous agreements on The Nance.

In the deal, the movie exhibitors, of course, take a cut of the revenue. Then Lincoln Center, Screenvision and event cinema exhibitor Kaos Connect take their revenue split, though Youngberg declined to disclose precisely the split but said it was pretty straightforward.

The Falsettos cinema deal might technically be complete, but there is still legal work to do on Lincoln Center's end, Schiffman said. For instance, as the film rolled out, she spent a fair amount of time monitoring social media and searching for illegally distributed show content on Google, and sending cease-and-desist notice against advertising bootlegs on social media.

“We deal with this all the time with our shows,” Schiffman said. “There's a difference in someone putting out a quick Snap [on Snapchat] about the show that could be promotion for us and then filming the entire musical from their seat.”

***** Stephanie Forshee writes for our ALM sibling Corporate Counsel. She can be reached at [email protected].