As a studio, Lionsgate is responsible for some of the biggest smash hits of the last few decades, but you may not have even realized it. You don’t even have to go back any further than late in 2025 to recall that Lionsgate had one of the most impressive hits of the year with The Housemaid, the erotic thriller starring Sydney Sweeney, Brandon Sklenar, and Amanda Seyfried. The film grossed over $400 million at the global box office against a $30 million budget, making it one of the most profitable films of the 2020s. Back in the mid 2010s, Lionsgate was also responsible for The Hunger Games franchise, which collectively earned billions at the box office. Lionsgate is also behind the next Hunger Games movie, Sunrise on the Reaping, which is coming to theaters on November 20.
One aspect of distribution where Lionsgate has excelled lately is giving some of its biggest properties stage adaptations. The Hunger Games: On Stage in London is now in its second successful year, Now You See Me is beginning a run on Broadway this fall, and the popular Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone-led film, La La Land, is also receiving a stage adaptation. However, Lionsgate has even more exciting expansion in the works, including its newest announcement, Dirty Dancing: The Musical, which is set to begin on Broadway on February 12, 2027. This comes after the play, which first opened in 2004, has been such a success lately, and it will officially begin a run on Broadway to celebrate its 40th anniversary. Gala Performances are also set for March 14, 2027, and Limited Engagement performances will run through September 5, 2027, at the Lena Horne Theater.
Collider Exclusive · 8 Questions · 2 Minutes Which Famous Music Video Would You Star In? Thriller · Take On Me · Sabotage · Single Ladies
Eight honest questions about how you actually are: how you feel about a camera, what your party trick is, how much you like rehearsing, what kind of attention you enjoy. Answer them and we will tell you which shoot you belong on. Four of the most famous videos ever made are casting, and every one of them needs a completely different person.
🧟Thriller(Michael Jackson)
✏️Take On Me(a-ha)
🚔Sabotage(Beastie Boys)
💍Single Ladies(Beyonce)
01
How do you feel about being filmed? Most people have a very specific answer to this.
02
What is your actual party trick? Everybody has one, including the people who say they do not.
03
How do you feel about rehearsing something? This decides what kind of set you would survive.
04
What film would you most want to be in? Answer for the one you would enjoy making.
05
How do you feel about dressing up? Fancy dress tells you everything about a person.
06
What would you spend a surprise budget on? Somebody just handed you far more than expected.
07
What kind of attention do you actually enjoy? Be honest, since everybody enjoys some of it.
08
What would you want the video to be famous for? Eight questions in, this is the one that picks your shoot.
Rolling You Are Starring In…
Four videos, four completely different jobs for whoever is on camera.
Here is your shoot, what the director would need from you, and why this one is still being copied
decades later.
Michael Jackson · 1983 · Dir. John Landis
Thriller
You belong on the biggest production of the four, the one that
stopped being a music video and became a short film. Fourteen minutes, a proper horror
director, prosthetics, a script and a dance routine that people are still learning at
weddings.
You want to play a character rather than yourself, and you would happily sit in a makeup
chair for four hours to do it.
John Landis had just made An American Werewolf in London, which is why this looks like a
film rather than a promo.
It became the first music video added to the National Film Registry, which is a sentence
nobody expected to write about a pop single.
The reason it still works is that it commits completely, and there is not one moment
where anybody involved is being ironic about it.
a-ha · 1985 · Dir. Steve Barron
Take On Me
You belong in the most romantic video ever made, the one where a
girl in a cafe gets pulled into a pencil drawing. It is a love story told in four minutes
with almost no dialogue, and it still gets people the same way it did in 1985.
You respond to beauty before you respond to spectacle, and you would rather one perfect
image than ten loud ones.
The rotoscoping took months, with thousands of frames traced by hand, which is why
nothing since has quite matched the texture of it.
The whole thing hangs on one performance being sincere, and the video would collapse
instantly if anybody winked at the camera.
It is the rare video people rewatch for the story rather than the song, and the ending
is why.
Beastie Boys · 1994 · Dir. Spike Jonze
Sabotage
You belong in the funniest video on the list, a full parody of a
seventies cop show complete with fake moustaches, bad wigs and invented character credits.
Nobody involved is trying to look cool, which is exactly why it is still the coolest thing
here.
You are at your best mucking about with people you actually like, and it shows on camera
every single time.
Spike Jonze was making videos before he made films, and you can see the entire career
starting here.
The commitment is the joke. Everybody plays it completely straight and the wigs do the
rest of the work.
This is the one on the list that looks the most fun to have been on, and by a
considerable distance.
Beyonce · 2008 · Dir. Jake Nava
Single Ladies
You belong in the one with no set, no story and nowhere to hide.
Three dancers, black and white, one room, and a routine so good that it made every other
video that year look overproduced.
You would rather be judged on what you can actually do than on what anybody built around
you.
Stripping everything away is the boldest choice on this list, because it only works if
the performance is genuinely flawless.
The choreography became instantly and endlessly copied, which is the clearest proof a
video has ever had of doing its job.
You are the sort of person who practises something into the ground and then makes it
look like nothing at all.
What Do We Know About ‘Dirty Dancing: The Musical’?
Dirty Dancing: The Musical is directed by Lonny Price, who is a two-time Tony Award winner for his work on Sunset Boulevard and Sweeney Todd. Price also played Neil Kellerman in the original film, and both his connection to the original film and passion for this new version of Eleanor Bergstein’s celebrated tale. Darrell Grand Moultrie, best known for his work as a choreographer on Fat Ham and Beyoncé’s World Tour, is the lead choreographer for Dirty Dancing: The Musical. The production will also allow for 21 new rising stars to make their Broadway debut.
Stay tuned to Collider for more updates and coverage of Dirty Dancing: The Musical, as well as other stage adaptations in the works at Lionsgate.
