We're Thrill-ed! King of Pop's Video Getting Stage Treatment

Big news in theater today. The video for Michael Jackson's "Thriller" is being turned into a musical! As Chris Jones at the Chicago Tribune reported earlier this afternoon, The Nederlander Organization, which controls Broadway in Chicago, has acquired the rights to the epic 1983 music video featuring 14 minutes of dancing zombies and Mr. Jackson mutating into a werewolf. The organization also said Mr. Jackson "will be personally and fully involved in the creation of the show." That is, of course, if he's not sequestered away in some magical fairy tale compound watching cartoons and coughing into a wrinkly handkerchief. Or, worse yet, dead?

Not to be insensitive, but it was reported back in December, albeit perhaps not by the most hard-hitting news source (unless you consider In Touch "hard-hitting"), that best-selling author Ian Halperin's forthcoming biography on the King of Pop includes details of a potentially fatal genetic illness. Per FoxNews.com: “He’s had it for years, but it’s gotten worse,” Halperin told In Touch magazine. “He needs a lung transplant but may be too weak to go through with it … [But] it’s the [gastrointestinal] bleeding that is the most problematic part. It could kill him.” Sensationalism? Probably. But, to put it rather morbidly, it sort of jives with a zombie musical.