Disney's 'The Greatest Showman: The Musical' Will Debut in London's West End Next Year

The much-hyped show will be the latest Disney stage blockbuster to debut in London before Broadway.

You didn't need to be immersed in arcane West End gossip channels to see this one coming. Earlier this year, a lavish stage adaptation of Disney's 2017 smash The Greatest Showman had out-of-town tryouts at the Bristol Hippodrome. And right now, Disney's current new musical Hercules is reaching the end of its yearlong run at Theatre Royal Drury Lane — the gargantuan historic theatre that has basically become the Mouse's home in London in the post-pandemic era since Frozen opened there in 2021.

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In fact, the biggest surprise to some may be that The Greatest Showman is new to the stage. It's a rare example of a massively successful musical that started life on screen, where the role of the legendary American circus impresario PT Barnum was famously played by Hugh Jackman. Its Gen Z-friendly, modern-pop inflected score is certainly a departure from the average contemporary musical, but nothing insurmountable — and a decade after it hit screens, The Greatest Showman: The Musical will open on Drury Lane's gigantic stage.

In terms of talent it's effectively a Broadway production, led by director Casey Nicholaw, who helmed the musical version of Disney's Aladdin and whose work can be seen all over the London stage, most notably in long-running classic The Book of Mormon. He's joined by the film's songwriters Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, who have written a series of new tunes to expand the musical, which has a book (the talky bits) by Tim Federle.

They're all Americans, which is fair enough as it's an adaptation of an American film set in America. But of course we have acting talent to spare, so it's a Brit cast led by Oliver Tompsett as Barnum and Samantha Barks (who played Elsa in the West End's Frozen) as Barnum's wife Charity, both returning from the Bristol run.

There were no reviews allowed in Bristol, so we don't necessarily know a huge amount about it, though Nicholaw is a pretty safe pair of hands who is unlikely to do anything too weird to it. That said, we're talking new songs and a live circus element that should add a distinctly distinctive layer of identity: if you're one of the film's many, many fans it should hit the spot, and it seems like a pretty safe bet for the biggest London theatre show of 2027.

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The Greatest Showman: The Musical will open at Theatre Royal Drury Lane in spring 2027. Exact dates are TBC, but you can sign up to be the first to hear more at thegreatestshowman.co.uk.