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Margaritaville – The Musical

On the Tony Kornheiser Radio Show on Washington DC radio station 980AM, Tony was interviewing Greg Garcia who said that he and Mike O’Malley were currently writing ‘Margaritaville – The Musical’ for Broadway. He said that Jimmy Buffett is on board to use his catalog and to write a few new tunes.

Greg Garcia is the TV show creator on “My Name Is Earl”, “The Millers” and “Raising Hope”. Mike O’Malley is and actor, TV show writer and play writer.

(thanks to Scott French for passing that along to us)

22 thoughts on “Margaritaville – The Musical”

  4. Me Too mad Matt ! What I`d Love to See & Watch is Don`t Stop The Carnival .What Say You Jimmy ?I`m Ready & Packed to Go To Broadway .Didn’t`t You Promise Jimmy ?

  5. Sorry, but this is a terrible idea, creatively & financially. First, the mere concept of a jukebox musical is creatively bland & boring. Second, a typical Broadway show costs upwards of $13 million to produce. You need to make about $600,000 a week to stay afloat. Unless it’s advertised & intended as a temporary run, it’ll likely fail miserably.

  6. no weirder than mamma Mia or rock of ages concepts…the songs will work but staying power will be directly related to quality of the book.

    I could see it thriving at the Helen Hayes theatre, kind of an extension of the RoA party musical.

  7. Rock of Ages wasn’t centered around the songs of a single artist. Mamma Mia had the tacky novelty of disco. If there was a sustainable market for this sort of thing in NYC, there’d be a Margaritaville a lot closer to Times Square than Mohegan Sun by now. I hope it does well, but the odds are heavily stacked against it.

  10. As much as Jimmy says this was his idea, it may not have been completely. I know that a group from the Philadelphia area called The Mango Men wrote and performed a musical back around 2004 called The Wizard of Margarita Isle. They did a parallel of Margaritaville to the Wizard of Oz and it was hugely successful in their small market, actually, quite brilliant and hysterical. They also had lunch with jimmy a few years ago to discuss it. I hear they copywrited their script. All of a sudden, jimmy makes this announcement. Go figure. I sure hope these guys get some credit for what they did to inspire this…..

  11. Hey Jimmy, Is this just going to be a hijacked version of “The Wizard of Margaritaville” , the play written and COPYWRITED by 2 guys in the Philadelphia area?

  12. Hi Joe,
    Thanks for that 🙂 I was at that lunch. I will never forget when Jimmy Buffett looked at us and said, “This is exactly what I have been looking for. I am getting older and won’t be able to perform forever. A friend of mine has created something that keeps his work going and he can just sit in whenever he wants. I can do the same thing with The Wizard of Margarita Isle…and we should change the name to The Wizard of Margaritaville.” I think John, Randy and myself all had to pinch ourselves 10 times each to be sure we were not dreaming!!!
    xo
    Lisa

  13. Hi Pat,
    My guess is Jimmy is too smart to steal the boys script. But it would be nice if they were included in some way. When we met with Jimmy, he was initially so excited, he wanted to get production rolling right away. I would love to know why, after two years of working with Jimmy’s team, he decided to go another direction without explanation. Will remain as one of life’s mysteries I guess…

  14. I saw the DVD of “The Wizard of Margarita Isle” . It was great!!! Already performed and recorded. Does that count as a copyright? I think that at least makes The Mango Men deserving of more than just “some credit”.

  15. Karen,
    John and Randy do have their script copy written, but Buffett hired writers to write a new one. Nothing has even been published yet, so it is insulting to Buffett to assume he would steal it before even seeing it. We are all still in good standing with Buffett and his team and we wish him the best.
    Lisa

  18. I wonder if there will be gorillas, spiders or snakes in Jimmy’s awesome production. When I heard Jimmy was coming out with a musical, I almost wet my pants. Can’t wait to get my tickets to the show.

  19. Haha Landshark Lover, that was hilarious wasn’t it? No gorillas, spiders and snakes allowed in the new script, since it is part of The Wizard of Margarita Isle. I can’t wait to see what they come up with!
    Lisa

  21. Wow Jimmy, this is going to be big !! I wonder what your musical will be about with such a professional staff writing the storyline for you. Don’t keep us in suspense, it’s about time you thought of this idea. !!!

  22. As a longtime fan of Jimmy’s I’m always amazed at how he finds new and creative ways to get his brand out there. So I was mildly amused to see the news about a musical, it will be interesting to see how he parlays his “world” into something so ambitious. It almost cries out for some treatment like that band did with the Wizard of Oz thing in Phila. But then again, maybe the wondrous world of Margaritaville deserves better than to get smothered under yet another re-hashing of the Oz story. It’d be like The Wiz for white people. Writers Garcia and O’Malley are big time… Hopefully they’ll infuse enough creativity to keep the mythos of Margaritaville alive – a fun place that is always enticingly just out of our reach – and not cheese-a-fied mockery of itself.

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