My pal Tom Stewart writes…
About the movie of The Producers being compared to, well, the movie of the musical, The Producers. While I'm a huge fan of the original movie, I think the musical solved a problem I always had with the first version: it has no real third act. I've always felt that it was 2/3rd of an excellent movie. After Max, Leo and Franz blow up the theatre, the movie runs out of the invention that drove the first part, and peters out. The play comes up with the terrific "Betrayed" number, the courtroom scene, and truly lives up to the promise of the first 2/3rd of the movie version.
The real comparison I think would be between Zero Mostel, Nathan Lane, Gene Wilder, and Matthew Broderick. For that, I'll reserve comment until I see the movie, but I don't think anyone will make me forget Mostel and Wilder.
I don't know how many people know this but The Producers (the original movie) had some severe changes made to its last reel or two after it first previewed. Mr. Brooks's first "final cut" had a much longer "blowing up the theater" sequence with Bialystock, Bloom and Liebkind crawling around and fussing with dud bombs and quick fuses and such. Some of that still exists in some TV prints but most of it was excised to make room for the courtroom scene, which was added later. This is the scene where Bloom makes his little speech about how much Bialystock has brought to his life and it was filmed a few months after the rest of the film. In fact, by then Kenneth Mars was unavailable so they wrapped some other guy in bandages to play Franz. I think you may be right that the stage version does it one better.
I don't think anyone can ever "replace" Mostel and Wilder in the minds of anyone who loved the first movie but I'll tell you an interesting thing. Just before the musical opened, there was a 2-hour documentary (infomercial) that ran on New York TV — scenes from rehearsals, interviews with everyone working on the project, etc. And in there was an interview with Gene Wilder in which he said, so help me, that he thought Nathan Lane was better in the role than Zero. I had to replay the tape three times to make sure he'd said that but he did. He's entitled to his opinion, of course, but it struck me as an odd conclusion to reach and an odder thing to say aloud. I'm a tremendous fan of Mr. Lane but that's a comparison that doesn't help him, doesn't help the memory of Mr. Mostel and doesn't help fans of the original movie to appreciate the musical version.
I'm probably posting way too much about this movie. I guess that's the kind of thing you do when you don't have any indictments to write about. But I was fascinated in how they transferred the film to the stage so I'm naturally fascinated with how they're going to transfer it back.