Breaking Baz: As ‘Mamma Mia!’ Returns To Broadway, Sabrina Carpenter Eyed For Third Movie & TV Version Might Be Coming, Producer Judy Craymer Reveals

EXCLUSIVE: Judy Craymer is the (dancing) queen, ruler of all things related to the Mamma Mia! stage musical and its movie iterations. Her default position is to remain tight-lipped about a third film, but tantalizing snippets emerge over lunch in Mayfair, London. There’s mention, for instance, of global phenomenon Sabrina Carpenter being sought for a role in the next picture.

There’s also talk of a possible TV version of Mamma Mia! too, but that’s way down the Greek beachfront.

Then, as we already know, Mamma Mia! returns to Broadway for a limited engagement at the Winter Garden Theatre with performances from August 2 and a gala official opening night on August 14.

The Winter Garden, located very nicely on Broadway between 50th and 51st streets, is prime real estate.

Craymer coos that that Mamma Mia! follows “gorgeous” George Clooney and the play Good Night, and Good Luck into that address. I jest that, perhaps Clooney might want to hang around and play one of the male leads.

What a riot that would cause.

But Mamma Mia! on stage, at least, never has relied on above-the-title names apart from those of ABBA’s Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus. 

Craymer’s name should be top of the bill too. I mean, Cameron Mackintosh puts his name in lights everywhere. 

It’s Craymer’s drive and determination that has kept the Mamma Mia! universe alive and kicking ever since it launched at London’s Prince Edward Theatre on March 23,1999. At the time, naysayers had a field day proclaiming the show would be off by June of that year, if not before. After transferring from the Prince Edward to the Prince of Wales, it now occupies another prime spot, the Novello Theatre on the Aldwych. All three venues are owned by Delfont Mackintosh Theatres.

I often find myself walking past the Novello as its audience is spilling out, looking as if they’ve had a bloody good night out. The sight of them always sort of jollies me along to the tube station, especially if I’ve had to sit through something grim elsewhere. 

Mamma Mia! had an initial nearly 15-year run in New York, closing in September 2015. “Ninth-longest-running show — not that I know that off by heart,” says Craymer playfully. 

Then, as now, she says it offers the city a “comfort blanket.” 

It’s an apt phrase. On September 11, 2001, Craymer, director Phyllida Lloyd, choreographer Anthony Van Laast and the cast were putting it all together when the devastating 9/11 attacks occurred.

Rudy Giuliani was mayor then, says Craymer, “and he was very keen that Broadway kept going, which was kind of good because everyone did. But we were actually putting on a show. We were in rehearsals in September, we started previewing in early October, and we opened on October the 18th. So it was that feeling that everyone’s like, ‘Why are we doing a romantic comedy musical and all this horror is happening?’ And then Phyllida and I and everybody were like: ‘This is what we do. So we have to do it. If we don’t do it a lot, people lose their jobs.’”

Craymer adds: “We felt we should be making sandwiches for fire crews or giving blood, all those things. But of course, you couldn’t do that. You weren’t allowed to do it. You weren’t allowed down there. So we just did what we did.”

I remember being in NYC as soon as we were allowed to travel after that dark day. And I’ll never forget the feeling that Mamma Mia! was in the right place at the right time. It helped cheer the city up after that atrocity.  

“It’s a comfort blanket, “ Craymer reiterates. “I mean, it’s managed to transcend some difficult times globally, really. Recessions, economic grind, terrorism. I think that’s obviously sadly the landscape of the world, and Mamma Mia! has been there.”

She goes on to say, “What I think it does is that Mamma Mia! is a certainty in uncertain times … and what shows like Mamma Mia! always do is create a nostalgia and a memory, and you want to go back with your friends. The storytelling works globally in that sense.”

Mamma Mia! toured ahead of opening on Broadway 24 years ago, and did two further national tours that year, so there has, as Craymer says, “always been a lot of love” for the production across the U.S.

The show’s success is, of course, down to the songs, but my strong belief is that it’s also because it’s underpinned by a solid structure in the form of an inviting book by Catherine Johnson that Craymer worked on with director Lloyd.

Craymer agrees. “It’s sustained that time and stayed relevant and the characters, the structure,” she says. “And it actually isn’t a typical Broadway show; it’s not all about the set, which is very subtle, but it does transport you to that Greek island — that’s what Mark Thompson created. He wanted it to be with the white stonework, the blue sea, jetties, that feeling of a gorgeous Greek island accessible to all, not in a luxury resort. 

“You weren’t suddenly in White Lotus,” she asserts, “you were literally in sandals on a beach just having a simple idyllic time. But it wasn’t a typical big, glossy, glossy set. And the same, with Phyllida’s direction, the subtlety of bringing the kind of Shakespearean themes out, which people would say, ‘Judy, don’t be so pretentious.’ Those themes relate to people, of parents, mothers, daughters, hope, identity — all those things that feed into it. At the beginning they were there, but I think they’ve become more something to hold onto by the audience. 

“And something really interesting as we’re on this,” she continues, “is that it’s really captured the Gen Z audience and has given Mamma Mia! a lot of momentum and that came from the movies and then into the show and into the audiences we’re getting in America and in London and around the world.”

The production, Craymer argues, has become a “cultural engine.” It’s fair to say that back in 1999, ABBA were kind of uncool, “but then we hit a kind of zeitgeist, and now ABBA’s a phenomenon.” The TikTok tribe adores the show, they lap it up. “TikTok loves the love romance, mother-daughter thing. When we started developing it nearly 30 years ago, none of that existed.”

Craymer, rather magnanimously, allows that Mamma Mia! sits comfortably with ABBA Voyage, which is a massive technical digital light show with avatars of Ulvaeus, Andersson Agnetha Faltskog and Anni-Frid Reuss in their heyday performing in a purpose-built 3,000 seat ABBA Arena in the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in Stratford, East London. It’s pretty soulless, daft as a brush, but most folk rock to it. 

Ulvaeus is behind it and is eager to find a space for it in NYC.

I don’t think ABBA would be anywhere near as popular now had it not been for Mamma Mia! which came from an original idea by Craymer.

In the beginning, Craymer notes, “We didn’t have massive advertising spend or anything. But after the first previews [in London], the word of mouth propelled it. And I think word of mouth — however cool advertising is now, however cool digital is — you can’t fault word of mouth. Of course, now word of mouth is social media, really.”

The thing about travelling on public transport, for me, at least, is that one picks up on what people chatter about as they make their way home after a show. Eavesdropping on conversations, I’ve recently heard people, mainly women, making plans for hen parties to see the show on Broadway. They’ve already seen it in London, they know the movies, and the next step is New York.

Smiling, Craymer observes that “people need that. Like people need event movies, you need event theater where people are able to share the experience” and have a memory of it.

“And I am not a technical digital person. I don’t even do TikTok, but I know from the demographics that memories and nostalgia feeds into all of those into Instagram, TikTok and everything. The story arc of Mamma Mia! includes everybody,” she says, noting that it’s the same with the movies.

“All the men want to be Pierce [Brosnan], Colin [Firth] or Stellan [Skarsgård],” she laughs. 

The Sabrina Carpenter generation “and Dua Lipa’s and then even Pink’s generation are all influenced by the  [ABBA] songs,” Craymer states.

Aha, the door’s opened for me to ask about Sabrina Carpenter and the third Mamma Mia! movie. 

Who would Sabrina play? I wonder.

Craymer demurs, but when I push, she says: “She’d be a goddess or some relation who would look very much like Meryl Streep.”

She won’t entertain further discussion about Carpenter, but the singer’s also friendly with Amanda Seyfried, plus she often covers ABBA numbers during her concerts, so she seems a natural fit for the next movie.

“It’ll happen when it happens,” she says firmly.

Craymer suggests that it’s the storyline that excites people .

“It’s not about sequels or redoing stuff. It’s about people engaging with characters, whether it’s become a habit or streaming or favorite films. It’s like listening to music over and over again. Like reading a book. You might read it twice. People read Dickens many times. No, IP continues on, and the movie is important for me creatively more than anything. But also because I think the world needs another fun experience. Cinema is having a tough time. [It] wouldn’t be a big expensive Marvel movie, but people would go.”

Look at the recent Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy movie, which “just did incredibly well,” she says admiringly.

The third Mamma Mia! film is on track and is well into development. “Well, we know what we want to do with the movie, and it will happen. And I mean, we brought together this amazing group of movie stars that were all connected through it and huge friendships evolved.”

She praises Lloyd, who directed the first film, who as a prolific theatre director “created a sort of theatre repertory company [of the film’s core cast]. Everyone’s all in. So there was no kind of, ‘Oh no, we’ve got to turn up for the dance rehearsals, singing rehearsals.’ And that’s how they felt. I mean, it’s just a as if you’re a group of rep actors all on tour.”

Would Meryl Streep’s character Donna somehow make a reappearance? Craymer nods affirmatively.

“Yeah, she said our after-shooting dinners were legendary,” she giggles.

There is a script “but I’m not going there,” Craymer says, disabling any attempt by me to draw out more.

Musical romantic comedies are tough to get right. If you don’t mold them with great care then they don’t work, I say.

Craymer doesn’t swat that one away “They’re the hardest to put together. It’s like — soufflé is the wrong analogy. But it you haven’t got the right ingredients … then they don’t work.”

That top-flight cast of Streep, Julie Walters, Christine Baranski, Seyfried, Dominic Cooper and the “boys” Brosnan, Firth and Skarsgård, she says, “brought a magic of ingredients to it. And then when we did the second film and joined by Lily James and the younger cast, they became part of that family too.”

There’s a feeling, Craymer suggests, “that everybody wants to join in and whether that embraces new characters, new cast … and that’s in the movies, but the same in the shows. We’ve always had fantastic casts and they’ve always loved doing the stage show, loved doing what they do. And I think going back to Broadway, we’ll hopefully have some fantastic alumni moments with bringing cast back in the show.”

Mamma Mia! will do a six-month run on Broadway, though it always could return at a later date, Craymer says.

This Mamma’s had one helluva trip over the years and has, as Craymer puts it, become “an incredible IP with ABBA” that you never set out to create. “And I think if you do try, it doesn’t work.”

She concedes that in this day and age “when people want content, there’s the movies, the stage show, there’s other productions of the stage show, and eventually there’ll probably be a TV series or something.”

My eyes pop at the possibility of a Mamma Mia! TV version. “It’ll be a comedy-drama made for TV. I’m not doing that now,” she quickly clarifies, anticipating further questions. “But I’m just saying it could happen.”

I can see a Mamma Mia! TV series on Peacock or Netflix, the BBC, ITV, Sky or whatever, I say.

“And you would do the original story going into all the stories eventually. Yeah, not doing it yet,” she says.

“Well, 20 years ago you didn’t really think about these things. People slightly pooh-poohed sequels, TV series. The world is changed, and the demand is for rights and familiarity.”

Judy Craymer the [dancing] Queen, ruler of the Mamma Mia! universe, has spoken.