Director Todd Graff has revealed that his contemporary adaptation of Broadway production “Damn Yankees,” which has Jake Gyllenhaal and Jim Carrey attached to star, will in fact deviate from the original story with a modern day spin about steroid use.
The musical centers on a middle-aged baseball fan who makes a deal with the devil to turn into his favorite team’s young home run machine with Gyllenhaal is attached to play said ball player while Carrey, of course, as the devil.
Graff though, who is rewriting the Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mendell script, has now thrown the issue of steroids use into the mix in what may provide the supernatural-tinged film more relevance and grounding.
“‘Damn Yankees’ is actually more plausible in today’s world,” Graff explains to MTV. “If a character like Joe Hardy — who’s the character in ‘Damn Yankees’ — sprung out of nowhere and was hitting 70 home runs in a season, who would not think immediately ‘steroids’? So [steroids] is not even a side character for us; it’s our main character. No one is going to think, ‘Oh, it’s because he made a deal with the devil!’ They’d think, ‘He’s juicing!’ “
We don’t mind the inclusion of the ‘roids issue but as a ‘main character’? Either way, after Graff’s last feature musical “Bandslam” took in a measly $5 million, questions must be asked about whether this will come to fruition? A sports-comedy-musical is an interesting prospect but what kind of audience would go see it? That said, with Gyllenhaal and Carrey likely to be still on board, surely someone out there is crazy enough to make it happen.