Following on from the release of his acclaimed Netflix war-drama, Da 5 Bloods, legendary filmmaker Spike Lee has announced the next project in his ever-growing roster of movies. And the tone has changed slightly: this time around, it’s a movie musical about the history of the erectile dysfunction-saving drug Viagra, and it’s impact on the sex lives of men globally.
The musical is inspired by a 2018 article in Esquire entitled “All Rise: The Untold Story of the guys who launched Viagra”. It’s set to explore the ways in which American pharmaceutical company Pfizer — you may have heard of them recently for having the second best Covid vaccine thus far — turned a little blue pill for erectile dysfunction into a billion dollar industry, despite the growing threat of a ‘sex panic’ from the Catholic Church, the perceived emasculation of men who needed to use the pill, and the lack of respect the research had within the pharmaceutical field.
The script will also be co-written by Spike Lee alongside the artistic director of The Young Vic Theatre, British playwright Kwame Kwei-Armah — who wrote One Love: The Bob Marley Musical. Meanwhile, the music will be led by Mark ‘Stew’ Stewart and Heidi Rodewald, best known for their Tony-award winning musical Passing Strange. The duo previously worked with Lee when he turned that musical into a movie in 2009.
That, paired with his much-hyped directorial work on the hit Broadway show American Utopia by David Byrne for HBO, means Spike is more than up for the job on a Viagra musical too.