Weird Al Yankovic’s Broadway Musical ‘Dare to Be Stupid’ Is in the Works

A Broadway musical built around “Weird Al” Yankovic is now in development, extending a career that has long blurred parody, pop literacy and self-mythology into one unusually durable comic brand.

Dare To Be Stupid: The Weird Al Musical is being assembled for New York’s theatre district, though dates and a venue have yet to be announced, according to Deadline. The team attached gives the project immediate theatre clout: Moulin Rouge! director Alex Timbers is involved, with Beetlejuice writers Scott Brown and Anthony King also part of the production.

The show is expected to draw from a run of Yankovic’s best-known parodies, including ‘White & Nerdy’, his take on Chamillionaire’s ‘Ridin’, ‘Eat It’, which reworked Michael Jackson’s ‘Beat It’, and ‘Like a Surgeon’, built from Madonna’s ‘Like a Virgin’. That catalogue alone suggests the production will lean on the songs that made him a novelty act to some listeners and a very precise pop satirist to everyone else.

“Ever since I was a middle-aged man, I’ve always wanted to be a part of the New York theatre community,” Yankovic said in a press statement. “Plus, the one thing people always say about Broadway is that it’s ‘severely lacking in Weird Al-based entertainment,’ and I think this musical should fix that problem immediately.” The joke lands in the familiar Yankovic register, but the move itself points to something bigger: a performer whose career has lasted long enough to become Broadway material.

Yankovic’s reach has never really depended on one medium. He has sold over 12 million albums, won five Grammy awards and popped up in a string of films, keeping his name in circulation far beyond the novelty shelf. That longevity also helped set up 2022’s Weird: The Al Yankovic Story, where Daniel Radcliffe played the singer in a parody of music biopics that exaggerated Yankovic’s rise into something knowingly absurd. Yankovic co-wrote and produced the film, and even turned up in a cameo.

NME called the movie “a cult classic in the making” in its four-star review, praising Radcliffe’s “winning performance” and comparing him to “a goofy high-schooler who wins the lottery.” The description fit the film’s tone, but it also underlined how comfortably Yankovic has become a subject for reflexive pop storytelling.

Late last year, Yankovic was also announced as part of the line-up for this year’s Bonnaroo festival, another reminder that his career keeps moving between comedy circuits, music stages and now, apparently, Broadway.