The first three episodes of Hawkeye are now streaming on Disney+, and the first episode provided a very special treat for Marvel fans who also love musical theatre. Fans can’t get enough of Rogers: The Musical, a Broadway show featured in Hawkeye about the life of Steve Rogers. In the episode, Clint Barton (Jeremy Renner) takes his kids to see the show, which includes the instant classic, “Save the City,” which was written by Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman, who are best known for creating the music and lyrics for Hairspray. This week, ComicBook.com had the chance to chat with Shaiman and Wittman, and they explained why Ant-Man was featured in the song despite not being present for the Battle of New York.
“Scott and I were writing lyrics. I was like, ‘We have to get things like tesseract into the song, and Chitauri, and shawarma,” Shaiman explained. “No, they knew the situation,” Wittman replied when asked if Marvel had any requirements for the song. “They wanted to musicalize the battle of New York. They did ask that Ant-Man be included in it because they wanted something where Clint would sit in the audience and go, ‘Wait, he wasn’t there. Why is he in this show?’ That’s just an example of, to both of us, of their humor, their sly humor.”
“That was the hardest part of the assignment was the fact that it was clear in the script, almost the main purpose of the song is for Clint to be kind of horrified at what he’s seeing,” Shaiman added. “So we knew that we had to write, hopefully, a good, entertaining song, but it had to also be the kind of style of Broadway that would make someone who doesn’t love Broadway musicals, not to mention someone who lived through what is being portrayed, just be kind of like, ‘What this?’ That was a perfect Marvel sense of humor, the fact that they wanted Ant-man to be in it to show how usually people get these things wrong.”
In addition to Hairspray, Shaiman and Wittman also wrote the music for the Catch Me If You Can musical, so we asked if there were any other movies they’d like to see adapted. They revealed they’re working on a Some Like It Hot musical, and had the perfect joke for folks who have been giving them a hard time about Ant-Man.
“Well, we’re doing one, another big one called Some Like It Hot,” Wittman shared. “Next year at this time it’ll open around Thanksgiving.” Shaiman joked, “But now we’re going to add Ant-Man into it.”
The first three episodes of Hawkeye are now streaming on Disney+. You can watch our full interview with Shaiman and Wittman at the top of the page.