In today’s installment of “What, really?” news, a Huey Lewis and the News musical is in the planning stages.
Titled Heart of Rock and Roll, the jukebox musical is not a biographical story about San Francisco’s kings of ’80s pop-rock, but it will feature their hit songs like “Hip to Be Square,” “If This is It” and “The Power of Love.” Though a premiere date or theater have not yet been announced, Rolling Stone reports that Gordon Greenberg will helm the project. Based in New York, Greenberg has directed dozens of works for the stage, including an award-winning production of Working that he adapted with Stephen Schwartz and Lin-Manuel Miranda.
Television celebrity Jimmy Kimmel helped the band announce the news in a video released Thursday morning. In the video, Kimmel expects to star in the musical as Lewis, despite Lewis not being a character in the show.
“I’m retiring from my show to play Huey Lewis, in a musical about Huey Lewis,” Kimmel says in the video. (Kimmel hosts the show Jimmy Kimmel Live on ABC.)
Lewis and the News ruled ’80s radio after the release of their third album, 1983’s Sports. (It also inspired a gruesome scene in Bret Easton Ellis’s American Psycho.) In total, the band has had 19 top ten singles, three platinum albums and an Oscar nomination over their almost 40-year career.