Newsies: Is Disney plannng a B'way musical?

stitchkingdom.com reports that on 4 Mar 2010 Disney studios registered the domain names: newsiesbroadway.com, newsiesmusical.com, newsiesontour.com, newsiesthemusical.com and newsiestickets.com, which is creating speculation that Disney Theatrical Productions are to adapt the 1992 American Disney musical Newsies for the stage.

Fans of the film, who have been petitioning Disney Studio's for a stage adaptation, are already drawing up their dream list for the cast.

The domain name registrations comes on top of an earlier report by Wayman Wong of the NY Daily News that composer Alan Menken and lyricist Jack Feldman were working on bringing the musical to the stage, featuring a new book by Harvey Fierstein.

The 1992 film Newsies, stage play by Bob Tzudiker and Noni White, with score by Alan Menken ad lyrics by Jack Feldman, tells the true story of the the 1899 Newsboys Strike in New York City. The strike was caused when the papers' 'New York World' and the 'New York Morning Journal' (owned byJ oseph Pulitzer's and William Randolph Hearst respectively) refused to lower the price of a bundle of newspapers, which the newsboys (Newsbies) purchased to hawk on the streets. The strike ended when the two papers agreed to buy back from the Newsies all unsold copies.

The film is a fictionalised account of this strike has told through Jack "Cowboy" Kelly, a newsboy who befriends 'David Jacobs,' a boy who, along with his younger brother, has temporarily left school to sell papers until their father, who has a broken arm, is able to return to work. When the price of the papers are raised, Jack and his new friends find themselves at the centre of a city-wide strike by the Newsies as they fight for justice.

The film contains a score of 12 songs including "Carrying the Banner," "Santa Fe," "Seize the Day," "The World Will Know" and "King of New York," and features dance sequences chireographed by Andrew Laszlo.

The movie, directed by Kenny Ortega, starred Christian Bale as 'Jack "Cowboy" Kelly' and David Moscow as 'David Jacobs.'

The movie was not a commercial success for Disney and was badly received by critics. Since that time the film has steadily gained a cult following and fans petitioned Disney to release to musical on DVD, which it did in 2002.

There has been an on going petition by fans for Disney to adapt the film into a musical.

There has been no official announcement about Newsies: The musical.