Michael Arden

And I watched it and I was like, well, this is strange.

It's like it's like a coming of age horror comedy.

Like, like, how would you even describe it?

It's got everything.

And I was like, well, that's a real opportunity, actually.

I think a lot of people think that's a flaw.

in tone when things are multi.

But I thought this could be actually its greatest asset.

Because if we spend too much time in the scary vampires, they're not going to be that scary.

So we have to laugh at them and we have to fight in order to love.

But the fact that it existed around this mom and her two boys, I was really excited to get to like...

tell the story about how we choose our family um which is ultimately what i think it's about and to pull that out of the film and and deepen it and kind of give it more juice was was really exciting and just like a visual and sonic playground i mean i got to put the team together and

I knew immediately that I wanted this band that I was obsessed with called The Rescues to write the music.

And boy, they did.

And I can't believe they had never written for the theater before or had never seen a Sondheim show.

So we changed that.

And now they're hopefully here to stay.

There's a moment in the new production where a character states that turning a movie into a musical reeks of desperation.

That got a big laugh, and it was a wonderfully meta moment.

As you built the production, what felt newly possible through theater that made the adaptation feel necessary rather than nostalgic?