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![Side by side images of Anthony Hopkins in The Father and Jamie Dornan and Emily Blunt starring in Wild Mountain Thyme Side by side images of Anthony Hopkins in The Father and Jamie Dornan and Emily Blunt starring in Wild Mountain Thyme](https://cdn.aarp.net/content/dam/aarpe/en/home/entertainment/movies-for-grownups/info-2021/broadway-plays-made-into-movies/_jcr_content/root/container_main/container_body_main/container_body1/container_body_cf/container_image/articlecontentfragment/cfimage.coreimg.50.932.jpeg/content/dam/aarp/entertainment/movies-for-grownups/2021/11/1140-the-father-wild-mountain-thyme.jpg)
Since the dawn of Hollywood, producers have adapted stories from stage to screen, including A Streetcar Named Desire, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and Amadeus. In recent years, big-budget musicals — like In the Heights and Dear Evan Hansen — have gotten all the attention, but we’re in a surprisingly robust Golden Age of Broadway dramatic adaptations as well.
This Thanksgiving, for instance, will see the release of The Humans, a film based on Stephen Karam’s Tony-winning 2016 drama, in theaters and on Showtime. Starring Richard Jenkins (74), Jayne Houdyshell (68), June Squibb (92), Amy Schumer, Steven Yeun and Beanie Feldstein, the funny but deceptively dark movie is set over the course of one Thanksgiving dinner in a run-down Manhattan apartment, and it’s already gaining Oscar buzz. Once you’ve watched, check out these 14 other films based on Tony winners and nominees that have opened since the year 2000.
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Copenhagen (2002)
Based on: Copenhagen (1998), by Michael Frayn, 88; three Tony wins (out of three nominations), including best play
The plot: In Copenhagen in 1941, German physicist Werner Heisenberg met with his Danish mentor, Niels Bohr, although the two great thinkers were by then on opposite sides in a world war. History shows that the conversation ended their friendship, and this high-minded play imagines what they might have discussed, from politics to nuclear power to atomic bombs. While the original production was abstract and dreamlike, set on a mostly bare stage, the BBC turned it into a handsome period piece, starring Daniel Craig (53) as Heisenberg and Stephen Rea (75) as Bohr.
Watch it: Copenhagen on Amazon Prime
Proof (2005)
Based on: Proof (2000), by David Auburn, 51; Pulitzer Prize for Drama and three Tony wins (out of six nominations), including best play
The plot: Catherine Llewellyn (Gwyneth Paltrow) is mourning the death of her father, Robert (Anthony Hopkins, 83), a mathematical genius who suffered from mental illness. As she gets ready for the funeral, her older sister, Claire (Hope Davis, 57), arrives to sell the house and take her back to New York, while one of Richard’s former graduate students, Hal (Jake Gyllenhaal), discovers a potentially revolutionary proof in one of his notebooks. Catherine claims to have discovered the breakthrough herself, but she’s also unsure if she has inherited her father’s mental instability.
Watch it: Proof, on Amazon Prime, Apple TV, HBO Max, Hulu, YouTube
Don’t miss this: New Shows Coming to Broadway This Fall That Are Worth a Trip
The History Boys (2006)
Based on: The History Boys (2004), by Alan Bennett, 87; six Tony wins (out of seven nominations), including best play
The plot: Originating at London’s Royal National Theatre in 2004, this crowd-pleasing drama is set in a boys grammar school in the north of England in the 1980s, as the students prepare for the Oxford and Cambridge entrance exams. The late Richard Griffiths, whom you might know as Harry Potter’s Uncle Vernon Dursley, won an Olivier and a Tony for his role as a beloved teacher with a secret. He joined the rest of the original cast in the film adaptation, which featured a crew of young actors as “the boys” who would go on to big things, including James Corden, Russell Tovey and Dominic Cooper.
Watch it: The History Boys, on Amazon Prime, Apple TV, Google Play, YouTube
Doubt (2008)
Based on: Doubt: A Parable (2004), by John Patrick Shanley, 71; Pulitzer Prize for Drama and four Tony wins (out of eight nominations), including best play
The plot: At a Bronx Catholic school in 1964, the strict and conservative principal, Sister Aloysius (Meryl Streep, 72), begins to suspect that the progressive parish priest, Father Flynn (Philip Seymour Hoffman), is molesting an altar boy named Donald (Joseph Foster), the first Black child to attend the school. Amy Adams costars as new teacher Sister James, and Viola Davis, 56, delivers one of the finest acting moments in her illustrious career. Just how good was she? Like Streep, Adams and Hoffman, Davis earned an Oscar nomination for her performance — even though she was only on screen for less than eight minutes.
Watch it: Doubt, on Amazon Prime, Apple TV, Google Play, HBO Max, Hulu, YouTube
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