We’ve known about Once Upon A One More Time—the fairy tale musical featuring the hits of Britney Spears—for a while now, but, weirdly, the story was always that Spears herself was not involved in any way. As far as we knew, Washington D.C.’s Shakespeare Theater Company had decided to put together a female-empowerment take on classic fairy tale princesses, decided to mix in some Britney Spears tracks, and then… spent several years trying to get the musical on its feet. (These things are hard to do.)
But now, in a shocking twist that’s almost as shocking as when the boy gave Britney the Heart Of The Ocean at the end of the “Oops!… I Did It Again” video, the people behind Once Upon A One More Time have revealed that, actually, Spears has been involved for a while and actually signed off on the use of her music after her conservatorship ended in 2021. This comes from The Hollywood Reporter, which says the Shakespeare Theater Company had previously licensed the music through the original songwriters, but the story notes that it was unclear who would’ve had to approve the song use while Spears was under the conservatorship (luckily that’s no longer relevant).
Once Upon A One More Time is set to open on Broadway on June 22, with previews starting this weekend, and producers James L. Nederlander and Hunter Arnold say that—in addition to the show being “fully authorized and licesned by Britney Spears—all of the necessary agreements were made in 2022 after Spears’ conservatorship ended. In other words: Everything is above board. On top of that, Spears supposedly attended an early reading of the show and was very supportive of the whole thing. In other words: It’s all good! Spears is most likely getting some money from this, or at least she was able to make the decision for herself about whether or not her music would be used in this Broadway show, which is great. Good for her.
