Grab Your Hankies, “Dear Evan Hansen” Is Slated To Come To The Big Screen

By: Kristen Mae

If you or anyone in your household has even a pinky finger on the pulse of the goings-on of Broadway, you’ve probably heard the buzz about Dear Evan Hansen. Last year, the show won multiple Tony Awards including Best Musical, Best Lead Actor (Ben Platt), and Best Featured Actress in a Musical (Rachel Bay Jones).

The show has been heralded by many musical theater devotees as a life-changing experience (as verified by several of my musical theater-obsessed friends who’ve traveled to New York City just to see the show), and is especially recommended as a show parents should go see with their teenager.

The hit Broadway musical “Dear Evan Hansen” is slated to hit movie theaters. (A Katz/Louis.Roth/Shutterstock)

But not everyone can travel to NYC just to see a Broadway show. Thankfully, the news recently came out that Dear Evan Hansen is slated to be made into a movie. Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, who wrote the music for The Greatest Showman in addition to writing the Tony-winning music and lyrics for Dear Evan Hansen, sold the movie rights to Universal Pictures.

Dear Evan Hansen has the potential to translate perfectly to the silver screen. It’s proclaimed by many to be one of those rare gems that hits home with both parents and teens. The central character, Evan, is a self-described loser with no friends, invisible to his classmates—they won’t even sign the cast on his arm—and desperate to fit in. His therapist instructs him to write pep-talk letters to himself, and one day he prints one of these pep-talk letters in his school’s computer lab, only to have the letter picked up by Conner, another loner type who is hostile toward Evan. Against Evan’s objections, Conner takes the letter, and then later, with the letter still in his pocket, ends his own life.

Conner’s family finds the note and assumes Conner had written it to Evan—that the two boys are close friends. Evan tries to tell them the truth, but he fumbles and can’t get the words out, and Conner’s parents seem intent to believe the letter was written by their son. When Evan realizes the letter brings comfort to Conner’s parents, that it makes them believe there was more to their son than the sullen, distant boy they’d had such difficulty connecting with, Evan makes a split-second decision. The audience watches as Evan deals with the consequences of his decision and his journey through self loathing and doubt.

Evan’s role as Conner’s “friend” quickly becomes the subject of discussion at school, and Evan is roped in by another student to giving a speech at an assembly—a speech which goes viral across social media. Evan has to decide how to handle his newfound fame as the guilt from his lie threatens to consume him.

Dear Evan Hansen explores many issues relevant to both parents and teens; for parents, the common sentiment among parents that we are just winging it and don’t really know what we’re doing. That we so desperately want our children to be happy. That sometimes, we feel lost.

For teens, Hansen focuses on the desire to fit in, to be seen, to be loved. The story deals with difficult topics like teen suicide and the negative impact social media can sometimes have on teens’ lives. Yet it’s not a dreary story onstage and it surely won’t be a dreary story on the big screen. The New York Times said of the musical, “Dear Evan Hansen is anything but a downer; the feelings it stirs are cathartic expressions of a healthy compassion for Evan’s efforts to do good, and his anguish that he may be causing more trouble than he can cure.”

There’s no start date for the movie as of yet, as negotiations have only begun, though Stephen Chbosky, director of last year’s worldwide hit Wonder, is in talks to direct. Also no word yet on which actors will take on the lead roles, though many are rooting for Ben Platt to reprise his role as Evan Hansen.

Related:

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Kristen Mae is a proud indie novelist with three books published, all of which hit bestseller on Amazon. She blogs infrequently at Abandoning Pretense and writes for various media outlets about parenthood, relationships, and current events.

Source: https://grownandflown.com/dear-evan-hansen-slated-big-screen/

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