In 1956, Paramount Pictures purchased the United States film rights, intending to produce an English - language version with Audrey Hepburn as Maria. The studio eventually dropped its option, but one of its directors, Vincent J. Donehue, proposed the story as a stage musical for Mary Martin. Producers Richard Halliday and Leland Heyward secured the rights and hired playwrights Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse, who had won the Pulitzer Prize for State of the Union. They approached Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II to compose one song for the musical, but the composers felt the two styles -- traditional Austrian folk songs and their composition -- would not work together. They offered to write a complete new score for the entire production if the producers were willing to wait while they completed work on Flower Drum Song. The producers quickly responded that they would wait as long as necessary. The Sound of Music stage musical opened on November 16, 1959 at the Lunt - Fontanne Theatre in New York City and ran on Broadway for 1,443 performances, winning six Tony Awards, including Best Musical. In June 1960, Twentieth Century Fox purchased the film adaptation rights to the stage musical for $1.25 million (equivalent to $10,300,000 in 2017) against ten percent of the gross.
who owns the rights to the sound of music
Twentieth Century Fox