Warriors

Warriors is a new musical written by Lin-Manuel Miranda and Eisa Davis, adapted from The Warriors, Walter Hill's 1979 film, and from Sol Yurick's 1965 novel, also called The Warriors. The setup follows the movie: a Coney Island gang is blamed for a killing it did not commit and spends one long night trying to reach home turf. The most visible change is the gang itself: here the Warriors are women.

The material first took shape as an album, out on October 18, 2024, and the Broadway run at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre will be its first staging. As of October 2026, previews were planned for March 2027 and opening night for April 2027, with exact dates still to come.

This summary follows the 2024 album; the stage version may differ.

A radio DJ, Lynne Pen, summons every gang in the city to Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx, where Cyrus, leader of the Gramercy Riffs, proposes a truce for the whole city. The Warriors make the long trip uptown unarmed, as the rules require. Then Luther, who runs the Rogues, shoots Cyrus and tells everyone that Cleon, who leads the Warriors, did it. Cleon is the only witness.

Separated from Cleon, the gang falls in line behind Swan, which does not sit well with Ajax, its most combative member. Word goes out over the radio that the truce is dead and there is a bounty on the Warriors. Their route back to Coney Island runs through rival territory, from the Orphans and the Baseball Furies to a suspiciously friendly invitation from the Bizzies at Union Square. Mercy, who has been dating the Orphans' leader, throws in her lot with the Warriors, and she and Swan fall for each other.

Beneath the chase, the writers point to two themes: what peace between rivals costs, and the dread of being falsely accused and never getting home.

The score is rooted in rap and hip-hop but moves through Fania-style salsa, merengue, ska, punk, heavy metal, R&B, funk and ballroom, with nods to K-pop and dancehall. It is meant to be sung nearly all the way through, with only short spoken scenes. Davis describes the work as a tribute to where hip-hop came from.

Rivals get sounds of their own. Miranda found rap too tidy for Luther, so the Rogues' leader sings heavy metal. The Bizzies, a male gang in cardigans that replaces the film's female Lizzies, sound like a boy band with a K-pop edge.

The album's 26 tracks read like a map of the night, with stops such as "Woodlawn Cemetery," "Orphan Town" and "Outside Gray's Papaya" before "Same Train Home" and a three-part "Finale." On the recording, Lauryn Hill sings Cyrus on "If You Can Count," and rappers including Nas and Busta Rhymes voice the boroughs. Those are album performances, not Broadway casting.

Miranda first watched the film on VHS at about age four. In 2009, after In the Heights had opened on Broadway, a friend, Phil Westgren, pitched it as a musical. For years Miranda said no, because the movie leans so heavily on action. In 2022 he asked Davis to write it with him; she had never seen the film.

The story also draws on real history: the Hoe Avenue peace meeting of 1971, a truce among Bronx gangs that left women out. Miranda has tied the false accusation in the plot to Gamergate, the online harassment campaign of 2014–2015.

Miranda has said making an album first let him cast artists who could never commit to eight shows a week. On it, David Patrick Kelly and James Remar, who played Luther and Ajax in the 1979 film, turn up as police officers.

In October 2024 the writers still had no director or producer. The Broadway production was announced on June 23, 2026; as of October 2026, no casting had been announced. Before Warriors moves in, the Lunt-Fontanne hosts Blue Man Group's holiday show from November 12, 2026, through January 2027.