Broadway's Biggest Debut: King Kong
You've never seen a puppet like this before.
He's 20 feet tall and weighs 2,000 pounds. He's monstrous, but, his creators hope, also moving. And he's coming to Broadway this fall.
King Kong arrives next month as the title character, and the one constant, in a $35 million musical which has been in development for nearly a decade, churning through scripts, songs and creative teams as the producers try to shape a show worthy of their title character.
He's being brought to life by an animatronic ape unlike any puppet Broadway has seen before — a moving sculpture, with sad eyes and a fearsome roar, requiring 14 performers, as well as 16 microprocessors, to operate.
The massive marionette is in some ways as naturalistic as his co-stars — he does not burst into song or break into dance, but instead knuckle-walks and vocalizes like an actual silverback.