A cult ‘80s vampire movie is about to sink its teeth into Broadway — with a cast stacked with fresh blood and familiar favorites. Based on the 1987 Warner Bros. film, The Lost Boys: A New Musical begins previews March 27, 2026, ahead of an April 26 opening at the newly restored Palace Theatre, promising a neon-soaked, rock-driven spin on teen vamp angst for a new generation.
The show
Set in a sun-drenched coastal town where “Missing” posters outnumber postcards, The Lost Boysfollows Lucy and her two teenage sons, Michael and Sam, as they arrive in search of a fresh start and instead stumble into a vampire underworld hiding in plain sight — on the boardwalk, in a rock band, and in the spaces where vulnerable kids go looking for belonging. As Michael is pulled toward a charismatic frontman and his seductive crew, Sam teams up with the Frog siblings, self-styled vampire hunters and comic-book obsessives, to rescue his brother before the transformation is permanent.
The musical keeps the original’s blend of horror, camp, and coming-of-age drama but pushes its themes — chosen family, dangerous desire, the seduction of never growing up — into a full-scale theatrical event built on guitars, aerial work, and a contemporary rock score. Directed by two-time Tony winner Michael Arden, with a book by David Hornsby and Chris Hoch and music and lyrics by indie-pop band The Rescues, the show leans into the 1987 film’s cult status while asking what it means, in 2026, to be young, restless, and convinced the real monsters are the adults.
The creative brain trust
Arden, whose revivals of Parade and Spring Awakening were praised for their emotional clarity and visual inventiveness, oversees a design team that treats Santa Carla’s boardwalk like a corrupted theme park: scenic designer Dane Laffrey, costume designer Ryan Park, lighting designer Jen Schriever (with Arden himself), and sound designer Adam Fisher. The staging folds in aerial design (Gwyneth Larsen and Billy Mulholland), fight choreography (Rick and Christian Sordelet), and electronic music design (Billy Jay Stein and Hiro Ida), aiming for the kind of immersive, concert-adjacent experience the original movie’s soundtrack hinted at.
The score, overseen by two-time Tony nominee Ethan Popp, draws on The Rescues’ layered vocal harmonies and alt-pop sensibility, suggesting a sound that leans more atmospheric rock than jukebox nostalgia. Producers James Carpinello, Marcus Chait, and Patrick Wilson — marking their first collaboration as a producing team — are positioning the show as both a genre piece and a millennial/Gen X nostalgia play, arriving 39 years after the film introduced “sleep all day, party all night” vampires to the multiplex.
The cult film it’s drawing from
Joel Schumacher’s 1987 The Lost Boys recast vampires as leather-clad, motorcycle-riding youth culture — more MTV than Gothic manor — and helped define the “sexy teen vampire” template that would echo through Buffy the Vampire Slayer, True Blood, and Twilight. Centered on two brothers (played on screen by Jason Patric and Corey Haim) and the mysterious gang led by Kiefer Sutherland’s David, the film mixed horror, comedy, and adolescent longing in a way that turned Santa Carla into a metaphor for both liberation and danger.
Critically and commercially successful on release, the movie went on to win the Saturn Award for Best Horror Film, spawned sequels and comics, and settled into cult-classic status — the kind of property that arrives on Broadway with both built-in expectations and a surprising amount of emotional memory for audiences who grew up renting it on VHS. That legacy gives the musical room to play: the story’s core — about brothers, mothers, and the terror/excitement of becoming someone new — is sturdy enough to survive an electric guitar, a flying rig, and a power ballad or three.
The cast: from cult leads to new blood
The production anchors its company with performers who already carry serious Broadway weight. Grammy winner and two-time Tony nominee Shoshana Bean (Hell’s Kitchen, Wicked, Mr. Saturday Night, Waitress) stars as Lucy Emerson, the single mother trying to rebuild her family even as the town conspires to pull her sons away. LJ Benet, a Los Angeles-based actor and singer whose credits range from Jesus Christ Superstar at the Hollywood Bowl to television work on “Dog with a Blog,” takes on Michael Emerson, the older brother drawn into the orbit of the local band.
Ali Louis Bourzgui, fresh off breakout turns in The Who’s Tommy and Hadestown, plays David, the dangerously magnetic leader whose allure blurs the line between romance, fraternity, and predation. As Sam Emerson, Benjamin Pajak steps into a role originated by Corey Haim on screen; his résumé already includes The Music Man on Broadway and high-profile film work, making him a natural fit for the show’s mix of innocence and heroism.
Maria Wirries (Dear Evan Hansen, Kinky Boots) plays Star, the young woman caught between worlds; Paul Alexander Nolan — with eleven Broadway shows to his name, including Water for Elephants, Parade, and Once — is Max, the charming local power player with secrets of his own. The Frog siblings, reimagined here as Alan and Edgar, are played by Broadway newcomer Jennifer Duka and Miguel Gil (Kimberly Akimbo), with Brian Flores (Head Over Heels, Oratorio for Living Things), Sean Grandillo (Spring Awakening, Oklahoma!), and Dean Maupin rounding out the core vampire pack as Marko, Dwayne, and Paul.
Around them is a sizable ensemble and swings bench — Ryan Behan, Grace Capeless, Mateus Leite Cardoso, Ben Crawford, Dominic Dorset, Carissa Gaughran, Ashley Jenkins, Liesie Kelly, Cameron Loyal, Pierre Marais, Mason Olshavsky, Hank Santos, Colin Trudell, DeLaney Westfall, and Pierce Wheeler — whose collective credits span The Phantom of the Opera, The Lion King, Kimberly Akimbo, The Great Gatsby, Bad Cinderella, Sunset Boulevard, and more. In a show about never growing up, the company should mix debuts (from recent conservatory grads and Jimmy Awards alums) with seasoned pros well-versed in rock epics, dance-heavy ensembles, and big, belt-heavy scores.
Why this might matter on Broadway now
If the 1987 film helped invent the modern teen vampire narrative, the Broadway adaptation arrives at a moment when genre stories about youth, identity, and found family are once again dominating screen culture — but not always stage space. The Lost Boys could slot into the lane of shows like Hadestown and Once that reimagine familiar myths through a contemporary musical language, with the added jolt of brand recognition and an underused Broadway house that has just spent years under renovation.
Whether it turns into a cult object of its own will depend on how well it threads the needle: honoring a beloved piece of ‘80s pulp, giving longtime fans the thrill of recognition (yes, the boardwalk; yes, the vampires), and convincing a new generation that immortality, leather jackets and a killer rock score still add up to something worth bleeding for.
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