Death Becomes Her: stage vs screen

Death Becomes Her began as Robert Zemeckis's 1992 black comedy starring Meryl Streep, Goldie Hawn, Bruce Willis, and Isabella Rossellini, a film with special effects but no songs. The Broadway musical, which opened at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre on November 21, 2024, has a score by Julia Mattison and Noel Carey and a book by Marco Pennette. It keeps the rivals and the potion but changes the opening, the ending, and more. Here is how they compare.

Stage

Broadway musical (2024)

Screen

Death Becomes Her (1992), directed by Robert Zemeckis

1. The film has no songs

Zemeckis's film is a dark comedy that relies on effects instead of music, and those effects won the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects. The musical turns the same feud into a full score by Mattison and Carey, with numbers such as "For the Gaze" for Madeline, "That Was Then, This Is Now" for Helen, and "Alive Forever" for the two women in Act Two.

2. Lisle becomes Viola and greets the audience

In the film, Lisle von Rhuman, played by Isabella Rossellini, is the mysterious, ageless woman who sells Madeline the potion. The musical renames her Viola Van Horn, played on Broadway by Michelle Williams, and opens with Viola and her chorus of immortals offering the audience the potion in "If You Want Perfection." She keeps turning up to taunt the characters and has the last word.

3. A different start and a longer jump

The film opens in 1978 with Madeline starring in a poorly received Broadway musical, then skips seven years to Helen in a psychiatric hospital and seven more to Madeline's miserable Beverly Hills marriage. The musical also begins with Madeline on Broadway, in a show called Me! Me! Me!, but makes a single jump of ten years, to a failing marriage and the launch party for Helen's novel.

4. Ernest's job and the staircase

In the film, Ernest, played by Bruce Willis, starts as a plastic surgeon and, after years of drinking, ends up working as a reconstructive mortician. In the musical he is still a plastic surgeon, though he drinks too. In the film, Ernest snaps and pushes Madeline down the stairs, breaking her neck. On stage, she falls down the stairs during a fight, gets back up, and accuses Helen of pushing her.

5. The feud gets patched up in different ways

In the film, Madeline shoots Helen with a shotgun, and the two women learn they are both immortal. In the musical, Madeline shoots Helen, Helen is impaled by an umbrella, and Madeline is decapitated before Ernest stops them. He agrees to repair them in return for his freedom, and fires Madeline's assistant Stefan to keep the secret. The book also brings back material cut from the film before release, including a scene in which Madeline is sent to a morgue.

6. Ernest's escape: a pool or a push

In the film, Lisle offers Ernest the potion in return for his surgical skills. He runs off with it, and on the roof he throws it away, falls, and survives by landing in her pool. In the musical, Madeline and Helen drug him and take him to Viola's ball so he can be made immortal. He refuses the potion and escapes, the women chase him to the roof, and Viola pushes him off.

7. Songs for the supporting players

The stage version hands solos to people around the leads. Stefan gets "Stefan's Turn" in Act Two, the waiter Chagall leads "Live to Serve" with the immortals, and Ernest has his own numbers, including "Till Death" and "The Plan." Even Viola's chorus gets a job: the immortals open the show and later take part in "The Chase."

8. The ending: a funeral or a graveyard

The film jumps 37 years to Ernest's funeral, where he is praised for a full life with a large family. Madeline and Helen, now decaying, mock the eulogy; on the steps outside, Helen falls and drags Madeline with her, and both break apart, leaving only their heads. The musical jumps fifty years to a cemetery, where the women visit their own graves and meet an elderly Ernest, who survived his fall and married his nurse. They lament that they will never get an ending.

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