Universal in your home for Broadway

Having its brewing musical version of "Animal House," Universal Pictures Stage Prods. has teamed with several legiters that are becoming frequent collaborators while using Hollywood studio's legit arm. Also round the creating team are prolific Rialto producers Jeffrey Richards and Jerry Frankel ("Hair," "August: Osage County") additionally to James L. Nederlander, prexy of Broadway landlord and creating/showing company Nederlander Org. Universal was among the producers of Richards and Frankel project "The Merchant of Venice" together with the present "Gore Vidal's The Most Effective Guy" and "Porgy and Bess" -- while using latter now playing inside the Richard Rodgers, a Nederlander house. Another Universal title, "Wicked," remains packing the Nederlander's Gershwin Theater for close to 10 years. Such bicoastal cooperating -- plus a roster of characteristics that have hit happens like the tuner version of "Go On," something special tour which Universal also produces -- has aided increase the risk for movie studio an ordinary presence round the Rialto. Recent activities offer incorporated "Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson" (another Richards-Frankel production), "Cry-Baby" as well as the Tony-sweeping "Billy Elliot." Creating for your stage is certainly an iffy business, but U professionals know from first-hands experience the hit frequently means large money. "Wicked," a normal top grosser on Broadway, grew to become one in the studio's best characteristics before a movie has been manufactured in the "Wizard of Oz" prequel tale. Happens version of Universal's 1978 screen comedy "Animal House" features a creative team including Canuck band Barenaked In addition to book author Michael Mitnick, whose play "Sex Lives within our Parents" received a Gotham run incorporated in Off Broadway's Second Stage Uptown series this season. Casey Nicholaw ("It of Mormon") will helm and choreograph. Production timeline for "Animal House: The Musical" has not been set. Richards mentioned the creatives began focus on this program a couple of several days ago and hopes by having an initial reading through through in the show later this year. Contact Gordon Cox at gordon.cox@variety.com

Netflix Negotiating To Become A Cable Service: Report

Last week Netflix CEO Reed Hastings saidthat the prospect of having cable operators offer his streaming video service to their customers was “not in the short term” as a possibility — but was “in the natural direction in the long term. His definition of “short” and “long” is open to debate, though: He’s already in talks with “some of the largest U.S. cable companies,” Reuters reports. It adds thatby year end at leastone cable company could offer Netflix on an experimental basis.The story doesn’t identify the operators negotiating with Netflix; Comcast recently unveiled its own online video service called Streampix. A Netflix-cable alliance could diminish the talk about cord cutting. Some analysts say that pay TV subscribers looking to save money increasingly will cancel the $65 a month video service and replace it with Netflix’ $7.99 a month package, which mostly consists of older TV shows and movies. It also would give cable subscribers an alternative to premium channels led by HBO. Yet some analysts wonder whether Netflix’s talks with cable are a sign of weakness. It “could signal that (Netflix) needs new mechanisms to drive sub growth and that it could be concerned about the looming implementation” of broadband usage based pricing — which would make heavy users pay higher fees — says Janney Capital Markets’ Tony Wible. He adds that HBO could respond by offering its HBO Go streaming service directly to consumers, instead of requiring them to first subscribe to basic cable. That could turn the premium channel into a formidable competitor to Netflix. Still, investors seem to like the news: Netflix shares are up 3.9% in pre-market trading.