Bill Murray, the musical that never was, and the “powerful visionary” who tried and failed to make it happen
Despite having never appeared in a conventional big-screen musical, it’s an area Bill Murray has always had a keen interest in, but it’s only recently that he’s tried to make a fist of it.
In 2022, New Worlds: The Cradle of Civilisation was released, a concert film that showcased the final night of Murray, cellist Jan Vogler, and violinist Mira Wang’s world tour for their combination of musical and spoken-word performance.
In the early 2000s, Mike Zito and Albert Castiglia formed the blues-rock band Blood Brothers, and when the actor and comic joined them onstage for an impromptu performance, he became a full-fledged member, but it wasn’t until two decades later that the group embarked on a proper nationwide tour.
He’s got at least a few musical bones in his body, then, but the musical genre isn’t something he’s ticked off in his career thus far. However, one of the most iconic names in musical theatre long dreamed of adapting one of Murray’s iconic movies for the stage, but it was a fantasy that went unfulfilled.
The Academy Award nominee cherishes it as one of his favourite films, and most people would agree that Harold Ramis’ Groundhog Day is right up there with Murray’s finest work. It might even be his greatest performance, with the behind-the-scenes bad blood doing nothing to prevent the comedy from becoming one of the most rewatched entries in his filmography.
Under most circumstances, when Stephen Sondheim set his mind on crafting a musical, he’d pull it off. After all, with eight Tonys, eight Grammys, five Olivier Awards, an Oscar, and a Pulitzer in his trophy cabinet, the composer and lyricist is one of the most influential and important names in the medium’s history.
And yet, he couldn’t crack Phil Connors. “I feel to make a musical of Groundhog Day would be to gild the lily,” he revealed in 2008. It was a long-held dream of Sondheim’s to adapt the classic time-looping caper into a song-and-dance production, but he could never find a way in, which left Murray every bit as disappointed as he was.
“I heard that Sondheim was one of a number of lyricists who thought the ultimate challenge was to make a musical of Groundhog Day,” the Ghostbuster acknowledged. “That guy was a powerful visionary. He could say things, so I wish he’d given it a stab. I would love to see what he’d done with it. Even if he thought it was difficult, I know that it would have been such a blessing.”
Sadly, the Sondheim-penned Groundhog Day musical wasn’t to be, and while he didn’t manage to pull it off, Tim Minchin did. His version premiered in London in 2016, five years before Sondheim’s death, and while Murray saw it at least twice, it was the unrealised iteration that he found himself fantasising about.
