Benj Pasek was born June 9, 1985, in Philadelphia. Justin Paul was born Jan. 3, 1985, in St. Louis.
Benj Pasek and Justin Paul met while they were undergraduates studying musical theater at the University of Michigan. Their first collaboration was Edges, a song-cycle theater work written in 2005. It’s already been produced more than 100 times and in several countries.
The duo in 2007 won the Jonathan Larson Award. The prize, named for the composer of Rent who died at 36 of an aortic rupture, honors emerging musical theater writers and composers.
Since then, the pair has written a string of successful shows for stage and film that have earned them comparisons to the great songwriting teams of the last century. These include 2012’s Dogfight, which earned Off-Broadway’s highest honor, the Lucille Lortel Award for Best New Musical; Dear Evan Hansen, which earned the two Tony and Grammy-wins; La La Land, from 2016, which earned them an Academy Award for the song “City of Stars”; and The Greatest Showman, the fictionalized biopic of P.T. Barnum starring Hugh Jackman.
Greatest Showman grossed $435 million worldwide, making it the fifth highest-grossing live-action musical. The song “This Is Me” won a 2018 Golden Globe, and the soundtrack was the world’s best-selling album in 2018.
And they’re still in their 30s.
More recent projects they’re working on include live-action versions of Disney’s Aladdin and Snow White, and a film adaptation of Dear Evan Hansen.
The Greatest Showman was a huge success. It grossed $435 million worldwide, making it the fifth highest-grossing live-action musical. The song “This Is Me” won a 2018 Golden Globe, and the soundtrack was the world’s best-selling album in 2018.
Critics praised the performances of stars Jackman, Zac Efron, and Zendaya, and they praised the high-energy production, but many noted the noteworthy liberties it took with the actual story of P.T. Barnum’s life. In a sense, that’s fitting: Barnum himself would have been perfectly happy to hawk a compellingly entertaining fake.