Casablanca (film) Los Angeles. Although "Casablanca" was an A-list film with established stars and first-rate writers, no one involved with its production expected it to be anything other than one of the hundreds of ordinary pictures produced by Hollywood that year. "Casablanca" was rushed into release to take advantage of the publicity from the Allied invasion of North Africa a few weeks earlier. It had its world premiere on November 26, 1942, in New York City and was released nationally in the United States on January 23, 1943. The film was a solid if unspectacular success in its initial run. Exceeding expectations,
Casablanca (film) on December 19, 1944, in which Dooley Wilson reprised his role as Sam. Julius Epstein made two attempts to turn the film into a Broadway musical, in 1951 and 1967, but neither made it to the stage. The original play, "Everybody Comes to Rick's", was produced in Newport, Rhode Island, in August 1946, and again in London in April 1991, but met with no success. The film was adapted into a musical by the Takarazuka Revue, an all-female Japanese musical theater company, and ran from November 2009 through February 2010. "Casablanca" was part of the film colorization controversy of the