Broadway shows to see based on your favorite new movies

If you flock to the cinema for every major new release, then use your taste in movies to help you find the next live play or musical to add to your watchlist.

Kyle Turner
Written byKyle Turner

Both Broadway and Hollywood give audiences new perspectives on classic themes. Movies and stage shows have found new entryways into everything from ancient mythology to horror stories to popular novels and video games. They're tales as old as time — even if they're now told with monsters, pop stars, and ghosts with unfinished business.

Whether long-celebrated or brand-new, movies and theatre are always in conversation with one another. Not only are many shows based on movies and vice versa, but the two mediums each explore contemporary trends and obsessions in different ways. For movie buffs, what you love on screen might help you figure out what you'd enjoy on stage.

We’ve compiled 10 show recommendations based on some of the newest major movies to hit cinemas, updated monthly. Take a look and find your next must-see show, or return to an old favorite with a new point of view.

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Summary

  • This roundup includes Broadway show recommendations for fans of 12 newly released movies including Practical Magic 2 (Wicked), Primetime (Downstate), The Love Hypothesis (Two Strangers), and Insidious (Paranormal Activity)
1.

Masquerade: For fans of You Can See Everything

2.

A Few Good Men: For fans of The Social Reckoning

3.

Downstate: For fans of Primetime

4.

Paranormal Activity: For fans of The Devils

5.

Little Shop of Horrors: For fans of Whalefall

6.

The Lost Boys: For fans of Street Fighter

7.

Delirium: For fans of Digger

8.

Midnight: For fans of La Bola Negra

9.

Two Girls: For fans of Sense and Sensibility

10.

Hadestown: For fans of The Odyssey

1.

Masquerade: For fans of You Can See Everything

Off-Broadway
Musical
Immersive
Award winner

Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim’s buzzy docudrama profiling Elizabeth Holmes is as wild a ride as one can expect at the movies this month, while also being a mind-melting study of authenticity, performance, and obsession. So too is Masquerade, an immersive take on The Phantom of the Opera. This version of the show heightens the break in reality that both Christine and the Phantom experience in their cat-and-mouse game.

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Masquerade: For fans of You Can See Everything

2.

A Few Good Men: For fans of The Social Reckoning

Broadway
Play
Drama
Revival
Stage to screen
Stars on stage

Before he launched The West Wing, The Newsroom, or The Social Network (and its recently released sequel The Social Reckoning), multi-award winning writer/director Aaron Sorkin began his career in the theatre with his courtroom drama A Few Good Men. Lincoln Center Theater’s current revival is a chance for Sorkinites to experience his musical dialogue in person. Plus, you'll hear longtime Sorkin collaborator Bradley Whitford deliver that famous line from the A Few Good Men movie.

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A Few Good Men: For fans of The Social Reckoning

Photo credit: A Few Good Men on Broadway. (Photo by Emilio Madrid)

3.

Downstate: For fans of Primetime

Broadway
Play
Drama
Stars on stage

Robert Pattinson is keeping the awards predictors abuzz with his performance in Primetime, an uncompromising portrait of Chris Hansen, the longtime host and creator of To Catch a Predator. His ruthlessness is contrasted against the pathetic nature of his subjects, catfished and denied the ability to seek help or rehabilitation.

The subject matter is complemented by Bruce Norris’ thought-provoking play Downstate, a character study of four convicted child sex offenders living in a halfway house. Both will leave you thinking and debating for hours to come.

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Downstate: For fans of Primetime

4.

Paranormal Activity: For fans of The Devils

Broadway
Play
Horror
Screen to stage

The rerelease of British director Ken Russell’s long-censored, rarely seen The Devils — about the religious wars in 17th-century France, the nuns who claimed possession, and the priest accused of witchcraft — has impressively thrived at the box office for a movie that came out in 1971.

Its frenetic maximalism and story of a woman possessed pairs perfectly with Paranormal Activity, which shares its paranoia about demons, controlling men, and supernatural events that may or may not be part of the characters’ (and viewers’) imaginations.

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Paranormal Activity: For fans of The Devils

Photo credit: Travis A. Knight and Cher Álvarez in Paranormal Activity on Broadway. (Photo by Matthew Murphy)

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09:00

Breakfast at Liberty Bagels

Regularly named one of the city’s best bagel shops, the unassuming Liberty Bagels is the perfect spot to get a classic NYC breakfast sandwich.

10:00

Macy’s Herald Square

One of the world’s largest stores, Macy’s is a sight to behold, especially when it’s decked out for the holidays.

5.

Little Shop of Horrors: For fans of Whalefall

Off-Broadway
Musical
Award winner
Stars on stage
Screen to stage

Whalefall is about a young man (Austin Abrams) who is swallowed by a whale, survives, and does his best to escape the innards of the giant whale. A modern-day Jonah story with chaotic special effects to match its bizarre premise, it recalls another show with a carnivorous appetite.

Alan Menken’s iconic Off-Broadway gem Little Shop of Horrors effortlessly blends camp, monstrosity, and sweetness. It also takes pride in its theatrical effects and the people who struggle to avoid a man-eating plant’s jaws. Audrey II and that giant whale could easily duet “Feed Me!” while feasting on some humans together.

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Little Shop of Horrors: For fans of Whalefall

Photo credit: Little Shop of Horrors off Broadway. (Photo by Emilio Madrid)

6.

The Lost Boys: For fans of Street Fighter

Broadway
Musical
Screen to stage
Award winner

Based on the popular Konami video game, Street Fighter gives you flips, kicks, and stunts for as far as the eye can see. It’s a blockbuster that brings the thrill of the game to the big screen, with just enough winks to its '80s cheesiness to keep it fun.

Its thrilling ambitions mesh well with The Lost Boys, based on the '80s teen vampire movie of the same name. It's framed as a coming-of-age show, but the sky-swinging aerial tricks, electrifying pyrotechnics, and heart-stopping fight choreography make it a Broadway blockbuster.

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The Lost Boys: For fans of Street Fighter

Photo credit: The Lost Boys on Broadway. (Photo by Matthew Murphy)

7.

Delirium: For fans of Digger

A groundswell of famous people have been rooting for Tom Cruise’s swing-for-the-fences anti-satire, in which he plays an oil magnate who may be the only thing who can stop a global catastrophe largely caused by his own rigs.

A snarling piece of work that debates the function of art in a collapsing world, its worldview is a superb complement to Eugene Ionesco’s Delirium, which features a married couple bickering as normal while war breaks out around them. Delirium is skeptical of our ability to make a better world, but it's slyly hopeful that small moments of intimacy can mean almost as much.

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Delirium: For fans of Digger

8.

Midnight: For fans of La Bola Negra

Off-Broadway
Musical
Drama
Stars on stage

La Bola Negra is a sweeping and epic romance set against the Spanish Civil War and spanning three generations of gay men. It's also Netflix’s big Oscar bet. A testament to the stories of queer people loved and lost, whose lives deserve to be uncovered from history, it has much the same aim as Todrick Hall’s maximalist Midnight. The sung-through musical, set during the American Civil War, propulsively examines an interracial gay relationship that shares similarly complex power dynamics with La Bola Negra’s romance.

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Midnight: For fans of La Bola Negra

Photo credit: Todrick Hall and Jeremy Beloate in Midnight off Broadway. (Photo by Valerie Terranova)

9.

Two Girls: For fans of Sense and Sensibility

Hear me out. Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility is, even on its surface, a story about young women and the way they understand their bodies and their worth in their family, in their society, and with respect to their marriageability. So, too, does Eliya Smith’s Two Girls.

The verbatim play uses the idea of the notorious porn video "2 Girls 1 Cup" as a jumping-off point to unfurl the friendship between the playwright and her roommate. Smith's play largely ditches vulgarity and instead takes a fun, insightful look at how women relate to their own bodies and to the world that puts a price tag on them.

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Two Girls: For fans of Sense and Sensibility

Photo credit: Juliana Sass and Chloe Claudel in Two Girls off Broadway. (Photo courtesy of Cherry Lane Theatre)

10.

Hadestown: For fans of The Odyssey

Broadway
Musical
Award winner
Drama
Romance

Classical mythology is in right now, as Christopher Nolan’s gargantuan epic barrels into theatres. The Odyssey follows Odysseus’s trials and tribulations on his return from the Trojan War while contending with the gods and, perhaps more frighteningly, his fellow humans.

Hadestown similarly reimagines ancient Greek mythology, blending the stories of lovers Orpheus and Eurydice and gods Hades and Persephone with folk, jazz, and blues music. It's warm, earthy, and gritty, departing from Broadway's traditional razzle-dazzle.

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Hadestown: For fans of The Odyssey