'WARRIORS' TO OPEN IN SPRING 2027

Lin-Manuel Miranda's West Side Story.

EXCLUSIVE: Next season brings a new Lin-Manuel Miranda musical, set in the gritty streets and subway of a New York on edge.

Miranda and Eisa Davis’ adaptation of the 1979 movie and 1965 novel The Warriors is scheduled to open on Broadway in March 2027, contingent on theater availability, according to a person familiar with the show. It will be preceded by a private workshop presentation in late August and early September. The score, which includes rap, hip-hop, salsa and funk, was introduced in a 2024 concept album.

The Warriors is the 46-year-old composer-lyricist’s first new stage musical since Hamilton, which has generated billions of dollars in box office revenue on Broadway and on tour. As recently as November 2025, a decade after it opened at the Richard Rodgers Theatre, seats sold for as much as $1,500, coinciding with Leslie Odom Jr. reprising his role as Aaron Burr.

Warriors cast album art

If The Warriors inspires a Hamilton-like ticket rush, it can’t come soon enough. The industry is hungry for material with popular appeal. While grosses for the 2025-26 Broadway season are up slightly from 2024-25, the spring box office is lagging. For the seven days ending May 17, grosses were down 12 percent from the same week a year earlier, according to Broadway League data. Given the inflation in production costs, the downtrend is even worse.

Of the 17 commercial musicals last season, only one has announced recoupment: Just in Time, about Bobby Darin, which originally starred Jonathan Groff.

Like Hamilton, about the nation’s first treasury secretary, the Warriors story doesn’t scream Broadway. The 1979 movie — directed by Walter Hill and based on Sol Yurick’s novel — about gang members falsely accused of murder who make a perilous journey from the Bronx to Coney Island, was more popular with audiences than critics.

Kids who saw it, including Miranda, were affected by its alarming depiction of a more dangerous era in the city. In 1979, there were 1,733 murders in the five boroughs, vs. 305 last year.

“It’s a snapshot of a New York in our memories,” Miranda told the New York Times’ Michael Paulson for a story about the Warriors album. “It’s this technicolor nightmare of New York that is genuinely beautiful.”

In a significant departure from the film and novel, the Warriors are women in the musical, which is expected to include intense movement and fight choreography. It’s scheduled to open 70 years after West Side Story, the landmark 1957 musical about rival gangs with music by Leonard Bernstein and lyrics by Miranda’s late mentor Stephen Sondheim.

Since Miranda left Hamilton’s original cast in July 2016, he’s primarily worked in film — composing, directing and occasionally acting. He also contributed lyrics to the 2023 Kander and Ebb musical New York, New York.

The workshop will be staged by Jenny Koons and choreographed by Andy Blankenbuehler (Hamilton), according to a casting notice. Casting hasn’t been announced.

Like Hamilton, Miranda’s first Broadway musical, In the Heights, ran at the Richard Rodgers, which is owned by the Nederlander Organization. Miranda and his father, Luis Miranda Jr., have been co-producing Broadway shows and would likely have a producing role on this one.

As a playwright, Davis was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize for the coming-of-age drama Bulrusher. She performed in the 2008 Broadway musical Passing Strange, the same season Miranda starred in In The Heights.

“We were like the Black and brown shows on Broadway and we were very tight-knit and became friends back then,” Miranda told Playbill, referring to Davis. “This is our first chance to work together.”

In the fall, City Center is scheduled to present a three-week revival of In The Heights. Especially in this climate, there’s no such thing as a New York theater season with too much Lin-Manuel Miranda.