User:Flask/sandbox

One hundred years after its publication, The Great Gatsby has been adapted for nearly all media.^[1][2] [...]

Mere days after reading the novel in the spring of 1925, theatre impresario William Brady acquired the rights to produce the first stage adaptation and hired Pulitzer Prize-winning dramatist Owen Davis to pen the script.^[3] Davis greatly altered the novel, rearranging the action in chronological order, inventing minor characters, and eliminating key scenes such as the confrontation at the Plaza Hotel.^[4] Directed by George Cukor and starring James Rennie as Gatsby and Florence Eldridge as Daisy, the play opened on Broadway on February 2, 1926, and ran for 112 performances.^[5] The production moved to other cities and became a great success.^[6]

Following the success of the 1926 Broadway play, Paramount Pictures bought the film rights to the play and undertook the first film adaptation the same year, directed by Herbert Brenon and starring Warner Baxter as Gatsby, Lois Wilson as Daisy, and Neil Hamilton as Nick. Although Fitzgerald purportedly liked the 1926 film,^[7] his wife Zelda loathed it. During a viewing, Zelda exited the cinema midway through the film and declared it to be "rotten".^[8] It is now a famous lost film. A trailer of the film at the National Archives is all that is known to exist.^[9]

A lobby card for the lost 1926 film adaptation

The 1926 film trailer—the only extant footage

With the advent of sound films in the early 1930s, actor Clark Gable approached Fitzgerald about remaking The Great Gatsby as a star vehicle for himself.^[10] Gable pressed Paramount Pictures to hire John O'Hara to write the screenplay, but his efforts failed.^[10] After Fitzgerald's death in 1940, the promotional efforts by the author's friend Edmund Wilson and the publication of the Armed Services Edition of the novel during World War II led to a Fitzgerald revival.^[11] Capitalizing upon this revival, Paramount Pictures undertook a second film adaptation in 1949, directed by Elliott Nugent and starring Alan Ladd as Gatsby, Betty Field as Daisy and Macdonald Carey as Nick.^[12] Although disliked by Wilson and Fitzgerald's other friends, the film proved a commercial success.^[13][14]

During the post-World War II Fitzgerald revival, the first television and musical adaptations occurred. In 1955, NBC's Robert Montgomery Presents produced a television adaptation starring Robert Montgomery as Gatsby, Phyllis Kirk as Daisy, and Lee Bowman as Nick.^[15] One year later, the Yale Dramatic Association undertook the first musical production with a score by composer Robert E. Morgan and lyrics by Aubrey L. Goodman.^[16][17] The show premiered at Yale's University Theatre to sold-out performances.^[18] In 1958, CBS filmed a televised adaptation as an episode of Playhouse 90, directed by Franklin J. Schaffner and starring Robert Ryan, Jeanne Crain and Rod Taylor.^[19]

Twenty-five years later, Paramount remade The Great Gatsby again as a 1974 theatrical film, directed by Jack Clayton and starring Robert Redford as Gatsby, Mia Farrow as Daisy, and Sam Waterston as Nick.^[12] A low-budget television adaption by A&E Networks followed in 2000. The Great Gatsby was directed by Robert Markowitz and starred Toby Stephens as Gatsby, Mira Sorvino as Daisy, and Paul Rudd as Nick.^[20][19] More recently, The Great Gatsby was directed by Baz Luhrmann in 2013 and starred Leonardo DiCaprio as Gatsby, Carey Mulligan as Daisy, and Tobey Maguire as Nick.^[8]

Nearly a hundred years after the novel's publication, its entry into the public domain in January 2021 led to a glut of new adaptations. In 2023, the third musical adaptation, with music and lyrics by Jason Howland and Nathan Tysen and a book by Kait Kerrigan, began a one-month limited engagement at the Paper Mill Playhouse.^[21] The production transferred to Broadway for previews on March 29, 2024, and opened officially on April 25th, 2024.^[22][23] Jeremy Jordan and Eva Noblezada starred as the leading roles of Jay Gatsby and Daisy Buchanan.^[24] In Spring 2024, Gatsby: An American Myth, a fourth musical adaptation with music and lyrics by Florence Welch and Thomas Bartlett and a book by Martyna Majok premiered at the American Repertory Theater. The production starred Isaac Cole Powell as Jay Gatsby and Ben Levi Ross as Nick Carraway.^[25]

Since entering the public domain in 2021, derivative novels of The Great Gatsby became legal to publish. Nick, a 2021 novel by Michael Farris Smith, imagines the backstory of Nick Carraway.^[26] That same year saw the publication of The Chosen and the Beautiful by Nghi Vo, a retelling with elements of the fantasy genre while tackling issues of race and sexuality,^[27] and The Pursued and the Pursuing by AJ Odasso, a queer partial retelling and sequel in which Jay Gatsby survives.^[28] Anna-Marie McLemore's own queer retelling, Self-Made Boys: A Great Gatsby Remix, was released in 2022 and was longlisted for the National Book Award for Young People's Literature.^[29]