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Hold Up, The New 'Rocky Horror Picture Show' Isn't Live? What's the Point Then?

By Vivian Kane | Miscellaneous | October 20, 2016 |

By Vivian Kane | Miscellaneous | October 20, 2016 |



Tonight, Fox is airing their Rocky Horror Picture Show remake event. Are any of you planning on watching? I wouldn’t blame you if you’re not. From what we’ve seen so far, it doesn’t exactly look promising.

What an incredibly bland blast of nothing.

But for those of you who ARE planning to watch tonight, I have to ask: Did you know this isn’t a live event? Because I did not. And looking at a cursory Twitter search, neither did most of the internet.

But it’s not live. Lou Adler, the Executive Producer, said it was never going to be live.

We never had any intention of doing it live — and I say we, because Kenny Ortega is the director. We really wanted to make a film, and especially with the choreography that Kenny, because of his background, has done. It’s bigger and brighter and he wanted to be able to take the camera down to the ankle and take it to different positions on the choreography that would have been hard to capture live. I don’t think we would have done it if they asked us to do live — pretty sure we wouldn’t have but they never asked actually.

So then what is even the point of this? It’s airing like a special live event, just once, tonight on Fox. And they’re trying to hype the live-tweeting element that the live musical events like The Sound of Music and Grease were great for. (Although this time the cast will be live-tweeting BECAUSE THEY WON’T BE PERFORMING LIVE.)

But they seem to be missing the entire point of why we watch these events. The live element is key. If they’re bad, we can watch them crash and burn. And if they’re great (like Grease), it’s totally impressive. This is apparently meant to recreate the experience of going to a live showing of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, but the live audience in the theater is a necessary part of that. WHAT IS THE POINT OF THIS?

Also, did we know that the actual full title of the movie event is The Rocky Horror Picture Show: Let’s Do the Time Warp Again?