Stephen Merchant’s wrestling film Fighting with My Family adapted into musical

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Fighting with My Family is adapted from Stephen Merchant's 2019 film of the same name

Stephen Merchant’s wrestling film Fighting with My Family is being developed into a stage musical.

It will be the first musical to be developed by songwriter Miranda Cooper and director Sam Hodges through Tilted Musicals – a new arm of their existing company, Tilted, which currently has Shadowlands running in the West End.

The musical will have book and lyrics by Olivier award-winning playwright Jon Brittain and lyrics by Cooper, who has written the music with Nick Coler.

It is adapted from Merchant’s 2019 film of the same name, which is based on the true story of a WWE wrestler called Paige, who was played by Florence Pugh, and featured Dwayne Johnson.
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The show is being produced by Tilted Musicals in collaboration with Seven Bucks Productions (co-founded by Johnson and Dany Garcia), Merchant, Kevin Misher and Birmingham Hippodrome.

Merchant said: “When we were making the film, I always thought of it like a musical: a young woman from the ‘chorus line’ fighting to get her big break, surrounded by theatrical, larger-than-life characters and huge sweeping emotions.

"I approached each wrestling match like it was a different dance number, building to a big show-stopping finale. Seeing the film reimagined for the stage feels like the natural next step."

Johnson added: "Fighting with My Family feels exceptionally well-suited for the stage. It’s packed with personal emotion expressed through the dynamic world of wrestling, which has always been about storytelling and connecting with a live audience."

There will be a public presentation of Fighting with My Family in 2027, following development, with further details to be announced.

Tilted Musicals said it aims "to bring together the music and theatre industries’ most exciting writing talent to create original, distinctive and entertaining stories with a fresh, modern sonic."

Co-founders Cooper and Hodges said: "What we love most about this story is, at its heart, it’s about family – and all the wonderful, messy, contradictory dynamics that exist in every family."

They added: "But also, wrestling is pure theatre. It’s as much about storytelling as it is fighting, it’s funny as well as fierce, and more than anything else, it’s about the art of winning a crowd over – the first rule of performance.

"For all those reasons, it felt like a perfect start for the first of our Tilted Musicals projects to be announced.”