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Making musicals of old movies is a risky business. (Remember Carrie?) But the Broadway success of this season's The Full Monty -- and buzz about Mel Brooks' The Producers, starring Matthew Broderick and Nathan Lane and set to open in April -- clearly has wheels turning in the theater biz. Here are some other films headed for the stage:
-- Hermie sings! The 1971 Jennifer O'Neill tearjerker Summer of '42 -- about a teenage boy's seasonal fling with a fetching war widow -- is being readied for Broadway this December, after a tryout in California. ''There's a wonderful number where Hermie goes to buy a rubber,'' says producer Mitchell Maxwell. ''It's the only musical ever where prophylactic is rhymed in a song.''
-- Strip Mall's Julie Brown has sold the stage rights to her 1989 big-screen bomb Earth Girls Are Easy (which followed a group of airheaded space aliens, including a young Jim Carrey, around Southern California). An Australian producer hopes to stage the show, complete with new songs, at an undetermined U.S. venue this fall. Contractually, Brown must approve the production before the curtain goes up. ''I can't even imagine what I'd have a problem with,'' Brown admits. ''It would have to be a real piece of s -- -.''
-- South Park cocreator Trey Parker says he's fielded calls from several Broadway producers interested in mounting South Park: The Musical on stage. ''But,'' says Parker, ''I'm holding out for South Park on Ice.''
