One of Dolly Parton’s biggest unfinished dreams will still come true.
Following the country music legend’s de@th at 80, her team has confirmed that DOLLY: A True Original Musical will continue toward Broadway exactly as Dolly had wanted, allowing audiences to experience her life story through the songs and memories she personally helped shape.
The production will begin previews at Broadway’s St. James Theatre on December 7, 2026, before officially opening on January 19, 2027.
That opening date carries extraordinary significance.
January 19 would have been Dolly Parton’s 81st birthday.
What was originally planned as a birthday celebration will now become something much more emotional: a major Broadway tribute arriving less than five months after her passing.
The musical was one of Dolly’s most personal projects.
When she first announced the production in 2024, it was known as Hello, I’m Dolly. She explained that she wanted to bring her own life story to the stage, combining the songs people already loved with newly written music created specifically for the show.
The project later became DOLLY: A True Original Musical.
The show tells Dolly’s story from her childhood in Tennessee through her transformation into one of the most recognizable entertainers in the world. Familiar songs including “Jolene,” “Coat of Many Colors,” “9 to 5” and “I Will Always Love You” are incorporated alongside new material Dolly wrote for the production.
Dolly also worked personally on the musical’s book with writer Maria S. Schlatter, making the project considerably more than a collection of her biggest hits.
It was meant to tell her story in her own voice.
Tony Award-winning director Bartlett Sher is directing the Broadway production, while acclaimed choreographer Mandy Moore is overseeing the movement and dance.
The musical already had an important life before Broadway.
It received its world premiere in Nashville, giving Dolly an opportunity to see her story begin taking shape onstage before the production prepared for New York.
But Broadway was always the larger dream.
Dolly had spoken for years about wanting to create a stage musical based on her life. She had previously written music for the Broadway adaptation of 9 to 5, but this project was different because the central story was her own.
Her passing naturally raised questions about whether such an intensely personal production could continue without her.
Her longtime manager Danny Nozell has now made clear that Dolly had already prepared for that possibility.
According to Nozell, Dolly spent her final years handpicking people she trusted and developing a detailed roadmap for projects she wanted to continue in the future. The Broadway musical was among those plans.
Her team says Dolly remained involved in her projects right up until the end of her life.
That planning means the Broadway production isn’t being created as something new in response to her passing. It is a project Dolly herself approved, shaped and wanted completed.
And the musical is only part of what she left behind.
Her team has revealed plans for unreleased music, books, a museum, hospitality ventures and various film and television projects designed to continue her creative legacy for years.
Still, the Broadway opening may become one of the most symbolic.
Dolly had spent decades turning pieces of her own life into songs: growing up with very little in Tennessee, leaving home for Nashville, navigating fame, building businesses and maintaining the unmistakable personality that eventually made her known around the world.
Now those stories will be performed night after night on a Broadway stage.
And when the curtain rises officially on January 19, 2027, there will be one unavoidable absence.
Dolly won’t be sitting in the audience celebrating her 81st birthday as originally hoped.
But everything audiences see and hear will carry her fingerprints—from the story she helped write to the classics she created and the new songs she composed specifically for the production.
Dolly Parton didn’t live to see her Broadway dream reach its official opening night, but she made sure the dream would survive her. And on what would have been her 81st birthday, Broadway will celebrate Dolly’s life in exactly the way she spent decades communicating with the world: through a story and a song.
