Apprentice's Broadway debut

A musical set on the backdrop of hugely hit reality soap The Apprentice will open next year.

Broadway's foremost wheeler-dealer in The Producers could be joined by another man enamored by big money. Producers Barry and Fran Weissler and Mark Burnett, with an assist from real-estate mogul Donald Trump, are developing a musical based on The Apprentice, Trump's hit television series.

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"Donald Trump is a larger-than-life character, and the Broadway musical stage may be the only medium large enough for him," Weissler, producer of the current revivals of Chicago and Sweet Charity, said Friday in a statement.

The show is being planned for a spring 2006 New York opening. Weissler currently is assembling a team to create the musical. Said Burnett, creator and producer of such reality shows as The Apprentice and Survivor: "I had a vision for a dramatic story within The Apprentice that I knew would work on a Broadway stage. This is not a spoof or a satire. It is a love story set to The Apprentice as a backdrop."