I posted a photo of me and A.R. Rahman.

And my inbox and DMs have not been the same since.

Everyone wants to know: what’s the status of Slumdog Millionaire The Musical?

So here it is. Straight from me to you. And I’m going to lead with the most important thing first.

Slumdog Millionaire The Musical . . . is NOT going to be a musical.

Okay. Okay. That’s not true. Come on. Of course it’s going to be a musical. “Jai Ho” will be in it. Other songs from the film — which ones exactly, we’re still figuring out. But yes. Music. Singing. A musical.

What I mean — and this is actually the whole thing, folks — is that A.R. and I kept coming back to one word in our conversations.

Experience.

Not “show.” Not “production.” Experience.

What does that look like exactly? I’ll be honest with you — we don’t know yet. The ideas are exciting. They’re dynamic. They’re also all on paper right now. This is early. Really early.

But here’s what we do know.

I’ve been thinking a lot about a conversation I had with Schele Williams — about the trap of building for today’s audience instead of the audience that will be sitting in your theater a few years from now. (And if you’ve been following this blog for a while, you know I come back to this idea a lot.)

Slumdog Millionaire The Musical isn’t opening tomorrow. These things take time — the right team, the right theater, the right creative vision all coming together. When we finally do premiere, the world will look different than it does right now.

So A.R. and I asked ourselves: what will audiences want then?

We talked around it a hundred different ways. And every single time, we landed in the same place.

The experience. Make it an experience.

Not because experiences are hot right now — though they are — but because this particular story demands it. Think about what Slumdog Millionaire is at its core. The engine of that whole narrative.

The game show.

That’s it. That’s the center. That’s where the experiential heart of this production lives, and that’s what we’re building around.

“Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” as a theatrical device isn’t just a plot point — it’s a framework. An interactive, electric, pull-you-out-of-your-seat framework. We haven’t figured out every detail of what that looks like on stage yet.

But we will.

Where are we right now?

Early. Very early. No workshop announcement. No tryout city. No creative team reveal.

What I can tell you is this: A.R. Rahman is at the table. The conversation is alive. And the ambition?

It’s real.

Where will we be tomorrow? I honestly don’t know yet.

But you’ll be the first to know when I do.

So I’ll ask you: what do you think makes a musical feel like a true experience? What shows have pulled you all the way in? Drop it in the comments. I’m genuinely curious.

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