Avenue Q team to take on High Fidelity

The producers of Avenue Q are looking to a follow-up project: a musical version of High Fidelity, reports Daily Variety. Robyn Goodman, Kevin McCollum, and Jeffrey Seller have acquired the rights from Disney to the Nick Hornby novel and the Stephen Frears-directed film. John Cusack starred in Frears's 2000 film version, which shifted Hornby's London setting to Chicago. For the musical, the record shop moves again--to New York. The story of a record store owner who compulsively lists his favorite records and lists his romantic breakups, Fidelity will be adapted for the stage by playwright David Lindsay-Abaire, composer Tom Kitt, and lyricist Amanda Green. Kitt and Green (daughter of Adolph Green) came up with the idea to turn High Fidelity into a stage musical. After writing a few songs on spec and performing them in their cabaret act, the duo got Disney to agree to the project. Green knew the Avenue Q producers from having performed in the show's early workshops, playing the Gary Coleman character. Goodman and Lindsay-Abaire have been at work on a musical version of the Betty Boop cartoon. All three creatives are repped by John Buzzetti at the Gersh Agency. Green said High Fidelity lent itself to musical treatment. "The book is about people who live in a pop-music world and are obsessed with pop music." "The hero's life is a soundtrack," Kitt told Variety, "and the big moments are songs." Under the pens of the gay-identified Q team, will the hetero High Fidelity develop a gay subplot or two? Couldn't hurt.