Weinstein Lands a Big-Name Executive Producer for ‘Finding Neverland’

The Broadway producer Barry Weissler (“Pippin,” “Chicago”) has signed on as an executive producer of “Finding Neverland,” the first big-budget stage musical from the filmmaker Harvey Weinstein, who is aiming the recently overhauled show for a United States premiere in 2014 at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Mass. Given Mr. Weissler’s track record of success, his involvement increases the odds that Mr. Weinstein will extend his powerful producing hand into theater in New York and London with “Finding Neverland.”

Mr. Weinstein, in an interview on Wednesday, said he had asked Mr. Weissler to join the project to have a theater veteran overseeing the business end of producing and allow Mr. Weinstein to focus on his self-described passion, honing the show’s new script by the playwright James Graham. The musical, based on the 2004 film about the “Peter Pan” playwright J.M. Barrie, has undergone a considerable shake-up. After a tryout production in Britain drew mixed reviews Mr. Weinstein installed a new creative team this spring led by the director Diane Paulus, who won a Tony Award in June for directing “Pippin” (which also netted a best musical revival Tony for Mr. Weissler and his fellow produces), and who is the artistic director of the American Repertory Theater.

“It’s hard as hell to do this,” Mr. Weinstein said of creating a new musical. “Barry allows me to work on the things I wanted to work on, and not worry about what lawyer to call, what actor did I have to sort out. And I don’t want to worry about rolling the show out around the world - I’ll take Barry’s advice on that. I’ve never delegated in my life, but I’ve never had Barry Weissler to delegate to.”

Mr. Weissler was not available for comment on Wednesday, a spokesman said. But other producers close to Mr. Weissler said this week that he had joined the project as much to work with Ms. Paulus again as to collaborate with Mr. Weinstein.

Last week Mr. Weinstein and Mr. Weissler gathered several Broadway theater owners, producers, and others for Ms. Paulus’s staged reading of the new “Neverland” script and score, which now mostly consists of songs by the British pop songwriter Gary Barlow. (A few songs remain from the show’s original composers, Scott Frankel and Michael Korie, whose musicals include “Grey Gardens.”) The closed-door reading starred the Tony nominee Brian d’Arcy James as Barrie and Jason Alexander (“Seinfeld”) as Barrie’s nagging theater producer.

“Jason Alexander told me afterward that we had a monster hit,” Mr. Weinstein said. “We’ve had a number of offers for theaters in London and Broadway - I think we’re in very good shape.” He said he planned to eventually open the show in London and then on Broadway. The American Repertory Theater production dates have not been set, and Mr. Weinstein said he did not know precisely when the show would run there in 2014.

Mr. Weinstein described the revised musical as “much more witty, funny, pointed” than the British production, which was directed by Rob Ashford. And the score by Mr. Barlow, who is well known in Britain as the frontman of the band Take That and a judge on the television show “X Factor,” represents what Mr. Weinstein called “new Broadway.”

“It’s not the same standard musical songs that we grew up on,” Mr. Weinstein said. “I think a younger generation will respond to this show immediately.”