Jordan Fisher will star as the Kid in the Broadway adaptation of Prince’s Purple Rain, producer Orin Wolf announced Tuesday. The musical is scheduled to begin previews March 12, 2027, at New York’s Majestic Theatre and open April 12, according to the Shubert Organization. Fisher takes over the role Prince played in the 1984 film and Kris Kollins played in the musical’s 2025 Minneapolis premiere.

The casting is the latest change as the show moves from Prince’s hometown to Broadway. The Associated Press reported that director Saheem Ali and writer Peter Duchan are leading the new version after Lileana Blain-Cruz and Branden Jacobs-Jenkins directed and wrote the Minneapolis production. Prince’s music and the story’s Minneapolis setting carry over, but audiences will see a different lead performer and a new book, the script that connects the songs.

Fisher takes on his first original Broadway role

Fisher has played leading roles on Broadway before, including the title role in Dear Evan Hansen and Christian in Moulin Rouge! He made his Broadway debut in Hamilton in 2016, playing both John Laurens and Philip Hamilton, and later appeared as Anthony Hope in the revival of Sweeney Todd, People reported. This time he will be the first to play the role on Broadway, after other performers established it on screen and in the Minneapolis production.

Fisher marked the casting announcement with a promotional video set to “Let’s Go Crazy,” intercutting footage of Prince with shots of Fisher playing guitar. The video showed how Fisher was preparing for the role, while Ali said in the announcement that he was interested in what Fisher could bring out in the character beneath the swagger. In the story, the Kid is an ambitious musician with a difficult home life who must contend with a rival act and a new romance. The role calls for a performance that can make those conflicts clear even to theatergoers who come primarily to hear the songs.

What changed after Minneapolis

The first stage production played the State Theatre in fall 2025, giving the musical an audience in the city where its story takes place. Hennepin Arts extended the run by a week, through Nov. 23, and cast Kollins, then making his professional stage debut, opposite Rachel Webb as Apollonia. Wolf told MPR News at the time that he wanted to see how audiences responded before taking the show to Broadway.

The changes since the tryout go beyond the actor at the center of the story. The Star Tribune reported that Ali and Duchan took over ahead of the move to New York. Some members of the team are staying: the Broadway database credits choreographer Ebony Williams and music supervisor Jason Michael Webb, both of whom worked on the Minneapolis production. The new production also retains Bobby Z and Morris Hayes, longtime Prince collaborators, as music advisers. The casting announcement did not describe which scenes would change or say how the new script would differ from the Minneapolis version.

A score that reaches beyond the film

The Academy Museum records that Prince won the Oscar for original song score for the film, which featured “When Doves Cry,” “Let’s Go Crazy” and the title track. The companion album won two Grammys. Those songs helped make the film and album closely associated in the public imagination. The stage production has more room to draw on Prince’s catalog: producers say it will feature more than 20 songs, including “I Would Die 4 U” and “The Beautiful Ones.”

The film and the musical both follow a fictional musician in Minneapolis. In an interview before the Minnesota opening, Wolf told MPR News that he wanted the stage adaptation to draw on a broader span of Prince’s career while keeping the film’s spirit. The Broadway team still sets the story in 1984, when music television is opening a path to national exposure for performers like the Kid. That setting puts the stakes of his club performances in the story itself: getting noticed could change his prospects outside Minneapolis.

What audiences can expect at the Majestic

The March preview date and the April opening are separate milestones. The first is when theatergoers can begin seeing the Broadway version; the second is the formal opening. The producer’s announcement says an alternate will play the Kid on Tuesday evenings and Wednesday matinees, a distinction for people choosing a performance specifically to see Fisher. The alternate and the rest of the Broadway cast are due to be announced later. The producer says tickets are already on sale through Telecharge.

The New York engagement will be the first chance to see how the new script, staging and lead performance work together. The Minneapolis run showed audiences one version of how Prince’s songs could carry the story onstage. The team at the Majestic is keeping those musical ties while asking Fisher to make the Kid recognizable as a character in his own right.