Mel Brooks Readies a Ride Back to the Stage with Blazing Saddles

Comedy icon Mel Brooks has confirmed that his next musical project is a stage adaptation of his 1974 movie Blazing Saddles, according to The Canadian Press. The Tony winner says he has already written two songs for the new show and is working on a third.

Brooks, who has already adapted two of his works for Broadway, The Producers and Young Frankenstein, seems a bit more cautious with a third outing. “I wouldn't rush to New York with it because [The New York] Times would say: 'Oh dear, oh dear, another movie converted and transmogrified into a musical," Brooks told The Press, adding, “The Times was only lukewarm to Young Frankenstein, but you know, everybody else was hot—some of the greatest reviews I ever got."

Blazing Saddles is Brooks’ film spoof of the Hollywood Western genre. It starred Cleavon Little, Gene Wilder, Harvey Korman, Slim Pickens, Madeline Kahn and Brooks in a number of supporting roles. The parody takes place in a town full of people named Johnson that stands in the way of the railroad. When an unsavory politician wants to buy the land that the railroad is to be built on, he attempts to make the townspeople flee by sending gangs through the town. When this plan fails, he sends the first African-American sheriff in the West to them, thinking it will make them leave. But the land-grabber’s plan is thwarted. Brooks says that like the film, the stage version would explore racial prejudice. He also noted that it could be finished as early as next year.