With the most successful show on Broadway right now being the classic Death of a Salesman starring movie stars Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Andrew Garfield, it’s no surprise that Broadway is again looking for Hollywood stars to headline a revival of another classic, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, set to premiere in spring 2013.
It’s being reported that Scarlett Johansson is in talks to star as Maggie the Cat, with Chris Pine or Jeremy Renner in talks to play her husband, Brick.
The Johansson/Renner pairing would reunite the two Avengers stars, though the New York Times reports that Pine is the favorite. Johansson is no stranger to Broadway, having won a Tony Award in 2010 for her performance in the revival of A View From the Bridge. However, both Renner and Pine would be making their Broadway debuts. Nobody involved in the production is talking about the cast or director of the revival of the 1955 Pulitzer Prize-winning play by Tennessee Williams. Producing the revival is Stuart Thompson, who is also the producer of Death of a Salesman.
A favorite that has seen several revivals, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof was last on Broadway in 2008 with an all-African American cast, starring Anika Noni Rose, Terrence Howard, James Earl Jones and Phylicia Rashad, something that another revival of a Williams play, A Streetcar Named Desire, is currently doing.
It’s always exciting when a big star wants to do a Broadway show, but like Lance wrote in his post on Rob McClure being cast as the lead in Chaplin I’m hoping producers don’t forget that it’s still important to cast the right person rather than a name.
