TikTok's 'Ratatouille' Musical Is Actually Happening

For musical theater fans, Broadway's lights have, unfortunately, been dark since spring of this year due to the coronavirus pandemic. As it stands, the industry isn't planning any kind of a comeback until mid 2021 at the earliest, meaning we'll have to get our song and dance kicks elsewhere. In the meantime, lauded composer Andrew Lloyd Webber has been posting full-length productions of his musicals on YouTube, Disney+ gave us Hamilton to watch whenever we please, and just last night NBC turned Dr. Seuss' beloved classic How the Grinch Stole Christmas into a musical production starring Matthew Morrison in the titular green role. But if you're looking for something perhaps a bit more social media-savvy, how about a TikTok musical based on the 2007 Disney-Pixar film Ratatouille?

Back in August, as many quarantine creatives are want to do these days, user @e_jaccs posted a video to TikTok of a self-written song paying homage to Remy the rat, cheekily referring to the rodent protagonist as "Remy the ratatouille, the rat of all my dreams."

That sparked a wave of would-be collaborators chiming in with their own original compositions telling the tale of the rat (voiced by Patton Oswalt) with a distaste for garbage and a penchant for cooking who winds up in Paris and learns to marionette a hapless kitchen assistant as a means to becoming a chef at the restaurant founded by his culinary idol. Okay, reading that back, the movie sounds utterly outlandish, but the experience of actually watching it is nuanced and beautiful. And yeah, okay, that's starting to sound a whole lot like a Broadway musical. This is all making sense.

Songs were eventually written and performed by TikTok-ers filling in for Gusteau, the dearly departed ebullient chef and Remy's de facto cooking conscience, Gusteau's plotting successor Skinner, the tenacious and talented up-and-coming chef Colette, and, yes, even feared food critic Anton Ego (originally voiced by the formidable Peter O'Toole).

And while following the thread of musical replies as they trickled in was fun, yesterday it was announced that "Ratatouille: The TikTok Musical" would be happening for real. Well, as real as anything can happen on a livestream.

Broadway production company Seaview (Slave Play, Sea Wall/A Life) is behind the benefit show and theater ticketing service TodayTix is selling tickets that will serve as a donation to support The Actors Fund, an organization that assists performers and behind-the-scenes employees in the performing arts. The show will include many of the TikTok users who posted their contributions to the crowd-sourced project, according to Deadline, but any potential celebrity performers have yet to be announced.

Tickets to the event, which will be streamed January 1, 2021 at 7 p.m. ET, cost between $5 and $50 and are available online now at todaytix.com.