Musical about CEO shooting suspect Luigi Mangione sells out
Luigi Mangione, the 26-year-old suspect accused of murder in the shooting of UnitedHealthcare chief executive officer Brian Thompson, will serve as the subject of a musical.
Playbill reported that the musical, titled Luigi: The Musical, will premiere in San Francisco from June 13 to 28.
The 60-minute musical will also include characters inspired by Mangione's fellow inmates at the Metropolitan Detention Center: rap mogul Sean "Diddy" Combs and entrepreneur Sam Bankman-Fried.
Luigi: The Musical is already sold out for its entire run.
According to the Taylor Street Theater, it is a "wildly irreverent, razor-sharp comedy that imagines the true story of Luigi Mangione, the alleged corporate assassin turned accidental folk hero."
In the musical, Mangione “navigates friendship, justice, and the absurdity of viral fame” with “his real-life cellmates… by his side.”
"Bold, campy, and unafraid, Luigi: the Musical is both laugh-out-loud funny and surprisingly thoughtful. If you like your comedy smart and your showtunes with a criminal record, Luigi is your new favorite felony," the official synopsis read.
It's reportedly a reimagining of Chicago, a Broadway musical whose lead character Roxie Hart was inspired by real-life accused murderer Beulah Annan.
Hart, like Annan, would ultimately be acquitted of murder.
Director Nova Bradford told the San Francisco Chronicle, “One of the central ideas that we wanted to explore with this musical is this tendency for us to project meaning onto these types of figures."
“We’re not valorizing any of these characters, and we’re also not trivializing any of their actions or alleged actions," she added.
Mangione was accused of murdering Thompson on Dec. 4 outside a hotel in midtown Manhattan, New York City. He was arrested five days after a fellow customer spotted him eating at a McDonald's restaurant in Altoona, about 370 kilometers west of New York City.
On Dec. 23, he pleaded not guilty to the 11-count indictment charging him with murder as an act of terrorism and weapons offenses.
Last April, a federal grand jury indicted Mangione, allowing prosecutors to seek the death penalty in his case.
Mangione graduated from a private all-boys school in Baltimore as valedictorian in 2016 before earning dual engineering degrees in 2020 at the University of Pennsylvania, a prestigious Ivy League university. His last known address was in Honolulu, officials said.
Thompson's murder came amid the frustration of several Americans, who have seen their health insurance claims or care denied, faced unexpected costs, or paid more for premiums and medical care.
Thompson, a father of two, became UnitedHealthcare's chief in 2021, which was supposedly part of a 20-year career with the company.
