Music Theatre International has obtained the worldwide licensing rights to “Beetlejuice,” the licensor announced Monday.
Drew Cohen, president and chief executive of MTI, said the company had been following “Beetlejuice” since before its world premiere in Washington D.C. When it came to Broadway, MTI customers expressed great interest in the title, Cohen said, a phenomenon reinforced by the viewership of the Tony Awards performance and its growing box office.
“The response that we started to get immediately after it opened was even greater than the response that there had been critically,” Cohen said.
In addition to the community’s enthusiastic response, Cohen said the musical has one of the key tenets they look for in licensing: multiple principal roles in one show. This lends itself well to regional and community theater companies.
Though MTI has the worldwide licensing rights to “Beetlejuice,” as with its other Broadway properties, it will try to stagger the licensing of the musical throughout the run of the Broadway show and any other subsequent productions.
“It’s a little bit like a relay race,” Cohen said. “They have the baton right now, and they’re going to hand it off at some point.”
