The Lost Boys

The Lost Boys is a new pop-rock musical adapted from the 1987 comedy horror film that Joel Schumacher made for Warner Bros. The setup follows the movie: a newly divorced mother and her two sons settle in Santa Carla, a fictional beach town in California, and the older boy falls in with a gang of vampires. On stage that gang has become a rock band. The vampire story doubles as a coming-of-age tale about identity and change, with brotherhood and chosen family at its heart.

The songs are by The Rescues, an indie pop-rock trio, and the book is by David Hornsby and Chris Hoch. Michael Arden directs. It is a world premiere: the musical skipped an out-of-town tryout, partly because of the size of its set, and opened directly at the Palace Theatre on April 26, 2026, the final opening night of Broadway's 2025–26 season.

Expect a production built on size: a set several stories tall, a 65-foot fly rig for the airborne vampires, and a fully analog design that does without video projections. At the 2026 Tony Awards the show earned 12 nominations, including Best Musical, and won four.

A prologue sets the tone. At an abandoned steelworks in Santa Carla, a night guard goes to check on a noise and is carried off by a figure in the air. The year is 1987.

Lucy Emerson, recently divorced, leaves Phoenix, Arizona, with her sons and moves into the house her late father left behind in the town where she grew up. Michael is the older son; Sam, the younger, lives for comic books. The boys' absent father hangs over the household, and after a fight with Sam, Michael heads out to the boardwalk. There he catches a set by a local band, the Lost Boys, and is drawn to Star, one of its singers. The band's leader, David, pulls Michael into his circle with Paul, Marko and Dwayne, and the audience is soon let in on their secret: they are vampires.

Meanwhile Lucy goes to work for Max, who runs a video rental store, and Sam, at the comic book shop, meets Edgar and Alan Frog, two self-styled vampire hunters who warn him that the town is dangerous.

David keeps testing his new recruit. He dares Michael to race motorcycles out to Coronado Bluff, then brings him to the band's hideout in the old steelworks and preys on the hurt left by Michael's abusive father. Michael drinks wine laced with David's blood, and on a railroad bridge he finds he can fly with the others. The signs of turning follow: a strange thirst, trouble with daylight, a fear of running water. Sam reads about these symptoms in a comic the Frog Brothers give him.

In the second act, Sam and the Frog Brothers realize that Michael is only half-turned, and Sam refuses to let them hurt his brother. Michael will not make his first kill, and Star will not feed either. Max takes Lucy to an abandoned playground she loved as a girl, and at a family dinner Sam and his allies test Max as part of their search for the head vampire. Along the way Sam finds his inner strength and says openly that he is queer, in the song "Superpower."

Compared with the film, the musical gives more weight to Lucy and to the reasons the family left Phoenix, makes the boys' father a larger presence and gives Star an expanded backstory. A saxophone player, the scene on the bridge and a Rob Lowe poster survive from the screen version.

The Rescues are Kyler England, Adrianne Gonzalez and Gabriel Mann. The band formed in Los Angeles in 2008, has released four albums and is known for vocal harmonies in three and four parts; One Tree Hill and Pretty Little Liars are among the TV shows that have used its songs. They wrote about 50 songs while developing the show; the finished score has 27 numbers, reprises included. The sound is rock-driven pop, and with the gang recast as a band, David, Paul, Marko and Dwayne sing together in eight of those numbers.

A few numbers to listen for:

• "No More Monsters" opens the show with Lucy and her sons and returns late in the second act as a reprise.
• "Have to Have You" brings in the band; it was released as a single in October 2025 with a guitar solo by Slash.
• "Time to Kill" belongs to David and the other vampires and first appeared on a 2017 album by The Rescues.
• "Thou Shall Not..." is an ensemble number built on a song from the 1987 film.
• "Wild" is sung by Lucy and Max, though the writers first created it for Star.
• "If We Make It Through the Night" is the full-company finale, which carried a different title earlier in development.

"Secret Comes Out" brings down the curtain on Act I. The score was still being reshaped late in the process: "Now, Forever," a duet for Star and Michael, replaced another song after a 2025 workshop reading, and "The Good Part," Lucy's first-act number, went in during previews. Some material is far older: "Take My Heart With You" dates back more than 15 years.

Laffrey's set is modeled on a derelict steel mill and rises in several levels, from the stage floor into the rafters. The scenic shop 3D-printed more than 700 rail fittings for it, each patterned after late-nineteenth-century mill hardware. A working freight elevator drops four floors to carry the action down to the vampires' underground lair. Other locations include the Emerson home, a store and a boardwalk with a playground, and a billboard on the set turns into a rock-concert stage.

Flying is the other headline. Six characters take to the air on harnesses, the four Lost Boys among them, with rigging, tracks and winches by Flying by Foy. The wires are painted a light-absorbing black, and the lighting is coordinated to keep them nearly invisible. The building helps: the Palace's auditorium was lifted about 30 feet during the theater's restoration, which left room above and below the stage for scenery and flying.

Some touches borrow from moviegoing. The evening opens on a glowing red title logo and closes with a scene in the spirit of a post-credits sequence. The motorcycle race is played with the actors on bikes facing the audience, and a playground spinner turns up during "Wild."

The film was released by Warner Bros. on July 31, 1987. It was shot mostly in Santa Cruz, California, and its title nods to the Lost Boys of Peter Pan, who never grow up. It later inspired two comic book series as well as two low-budget sequels.

The producers reportedly secured the stage rights from Warner Bros. around the time of the 2020 COVID-19 lockdowns, and in 2021, on Arden's suggestion, they approached The Rescues. The show took shape through industry presentations. An early, invitation-only one featured Caissie Levy, Casey Likes, Nathan Levy and Lorna Courtney. On January 27, 2025, the producers announced a Broadway run at the Palace Theatre for spring 2026, and another private presentation followed on March 14, 2025.

Caissie Levy was announced as Lucy in October 2025 but left the production in November 2025 because of the extension of Ragtime, and Shoshana Bean took over the role in December 2025. Previews began on March 27, 2026, and the show opened on April 26, 2026.

The cast album, The Lost Boys (Original Broadway Cast Recording), was released digitally by Atlantic Records on July 24, 2026. The Rescues produced it with Popp, and it holds all 27 numbers plus a bonus track cut during previews. A North American tour has been announced to launch in spring 2028 at Playhouse Square in Cleveland, Ohio.