Waitress: The Musical Movie Gets Release Date

Sara Bareilles stars in a filmed version of the popular musical.

By Russ Burlingame

Waitress: The Musical, a film adaptation of the Broadway hit featuring music by Sara Bareilles, is coming to theaters on December 7, Bleecker Street Films announced. The movie, which will star Bareilles, is based on the 2007 movie of the same name, in which Keri Russell starred as a small town baker and waitress named Jenna, who is looking for a way out of an abusive relationship. After becoming pregnant, Jenna begins an affair with her doctor. Desperate for the money and opportunity that could get her away from the bad situation, she puts her hopes on a pie-making contest.

In a The Producers style switcheroo, the play based on a movie, will now get a movie based on the play's book, complete with music by Bareilles. Unlike The Producers, though, it won't be a big-budget feature film. Instead, as Disney did with Hamilton, the Waitress movie is a filmed version of a special performance of the play.

Waitress debuted on Broadway in 2016, and then had a national tour from 2017-2019. In 2019 and 2020, the play was performed at London's West End. The performance filmed for commercial release took place in 2021. In 2016, the show was nominated for Best Musical, Best Original Score, Best Performance By a Leading Actress (Jessie Mueller), and Best Performance By a Featured Actor (Christopher Fitzgerald) at the Tony Awards. The next year, the soudntrack was nominated for a Grammy.

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Variety first reported on the release date.

Here's the synopsis, at least according to the Variety article: Waitress: The Musical stars Sara Bareilles as Jenna Hunterson, a waitress and pie maker who finds herself stuck in a small town and loveless marriage. However, when Jenna gets the opportunity to take part in a baking contest outside of her town, she leaps at the chance to change her life.

Besides Bareilles, Waitress stars Eric Anderson, Charity Angél Dawson, Christopher Fitzgerald, Drew Gehling, Caitlin Houlahan, Dakin Matthews and Joe Tippett. Michael Roiff, Barry and Fran Weissler, Bareilles, Nelson, and Paul Morphos serve as producers, with Alecia Parker as an executive producer.

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