By Grace Hatchell
Ey up, then — this one came clattering into my satchel at one minute past midnight, which is a bold hour to be announcing anything unless you’re a ghost, a wrestler, or somebody who is a night owl.
Still, I’ll let them off, because this is a juicy one.
Fighting With My Family, Stephen Merchant’s 2019 film about WWE star Paige and her wonderfully chaotic wrestling family, is being turned into a stage musical. And straight away, I can see why this one’s got people interested. It’s already got heart, humour, grit, a proper outsider story, and enough larger-than-life characters to fill a ring and a chorus line at the same time.
The new musical is being developed by Tilted Musicals in collaboration with Stephen Merchant, Seven Bucks Productions, Kevin Misher and Birmingham Hippodrome. The book and lyrics come from Olivier Award-winning playwright Jon Brittain, while the score will be created by Miranda Cooper and Nick Coler — which gives it a very interesting musical identity already. This is not some half-hearted “let’s stick a few songs in and hope for the best” job. There’s a serious creative team behind it.
Merchant has said that when he made the film, he always thought of it a bit like a musical anyway — a young woman from the “chorus line” fighting for her big break, surrounded by theatrical characters and huge emotional moments. He described each wrestling match as almost like a dance number building towards a show-stopping finale, and honestly, once you look at it like that, it’s hard not to see the logic.
Dwayne Johnson has also backed the idea, saying the story feels especially well-suited to the stage because wrestling has always been about storytelling and connecting with a live audience. Which is true. Strip it right back and wrestling and theatre are cousins, aren’t they? Big entrances, larger-than-life personas, heroes, villains, emotion, drama, timing, rhythm, crowd reaction. One has more body slams, but still.
What really caught my eye, though, was what Miranda Cooper and Sam Hodges had to say, because their quote gets right to the centre of the whole thing. They said what they love most is that, at heart, this is a story about family — and all the “wonderful, messy, contradictory dynamics” that come with that. They also pointed out that it follows in the footsteps of British films like The Full Monty, Billy Elliot and Everybody’s Talking About Jamie, all of which made the jump into stage musicals successfully. That’s quite a statement, but you can see the thinking. These are stories with working-class texture, heart, humour, identity, and characters you want to root for.
And then they said something that really makes the whole project click: wrestling is pure theatre. It’s storytelling as much as fighting, funny as well as fierce, and at its core it’s about winning a crowd over — which, as they put it, is the first rule of performance. That, for me, is the line that really sells this project. Because it stops the musical sounding like a gimmick and starts it sounding like something that actually belongs on stage.
So recapping just for you:
Fighting With My Family is being adapted into a new stage musical by Tilted Musicals, with Stephen Merchant, Seven Bucks Productions and Birmingham Hippodrome involved. Based on the true story of WWE star Paige, the production will feature a book and lyrics by Jon Brittain and music by Miranda Cooper and Nick Coler, with workshops this year and a public presentation planned for 2027., here’s what I reckon really matters.
This story follows Saraya Knight — better known to wrestling fans as Paige — a goth outsider brought up in a loving but gloriously chaotic British wrestling dynasty, who gets the chance to leave Norwich behind and head into the bright lights of WWE. That’s the emotional engine of the whole piece. It’s not just about wrestling. It’s about identity. About ambition. About family. About what happens when the place that made you can’t come with you into the next chapter.
The original film, written and directed by Stephen Merchant, premiered at Sundance in January 2019 before getting its worldwide release the following month. Florence Pugh played Paige, Vince Vaughn played the WWE trainer, and Dwayne Johnson appeared as himself as well as producing the film with Dany Garcia for Seven Bucks Productions.
This stage version now becomes the first musical to be developed and produced by Tilted Musicals, the new company set up by Miranda Cooper and Sam Hodges. Their aim is to bring theatre and music-writing talent together to create distinctive, entertaining stories with a modern sound. So in a way, this announcement is doing two jobs at once — it’s introducing Fighting With My Family as a musical, and introducing Tilted Musicals as a company with serious ambitions.
As for where it goes next, closed workshops are due to take place this year, with a public presentation planned for 2027. So we’re still in the “watch this space” stage rather than the “book your tickets, pet” stage. But it’s definitely moving.
And I’ll say this — I think the question is no longer “can a wrestling film become a musical?” I think the better question is why wouldn’t it?
It’s got the underdog story. It’s got the humour. It’s got the emotional punches. It’s got the spectacle. And if this creative team can pin all that down without losing the grit that made people love the story in the first place, they might just have something that lands both in the ring and on the stage.
Which is more than can be said for sending press releases at one minute past midnight. That, my loves, is pure heel behaviour.
Tilted | New Musicals, Plays & Podcast Adaptations
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