Robert Townsend's The Five Heartbeats in Development as a Broadway Musical

The Five Heartbeats could soon be singing and dancing their way to New York. A stage musical adaptation of Robert Townsend's 1991 film The Five Heartbeats, about a fictional Motown-era singing group, is currently in the works and aiming for Broadway, according to Deadline.

The stage version will "tell a similar story with music that people know from the movie, but there is a composer, Grammy Award winner, a guy who has won some big awards who already said he will write an original song for us," Townsend revealed. He also said that he is writing the musical's book with Kennen Ivory Wayans, with whom he co-wrote the film's screenplay, and that a producer is working to bring the show to Broadway.

The Five Heartbeats film, which starred and was directed by Townsend, follows the rise and fall of an African-American vocal group. A documentary about the film, titled Making the Five Heartbeats, debuted in 2018.

A Five Heartbeats stage musical would be right at home on Broadway, where the similar-themed Motown The Musical was a hit with audiences and the highly anticipated Temptations musical Ain't Too Proud arrives at the Imperial Theatre this spring.

Look back at the trailer for The Five Heartbeats below.