Aaron Sorkin came to prominence with the play (followed by the movie) "A Few Good Men".  That lead to some of his best work on TV — the cult fave SportsNight (which sadly never found its audience), the widely acclaimed The West Wing (which foundered after Sorkin moved on to other things), and the recent not-as-good-but-getting-better-until-it-was-axed Studio 60.

What’s his next project?

Turning a record album into a Broadway musical.  And not just any musical, but a musical about… well, pink robots?

Broadway will soon get just a bit battier, as Wayne Coyne revealed in a recent interview with EW.com that the Flaming Lips‘ 2002 LP Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots will be transformed into a Broadway musical.

Described Coyne, "There’s the real world and then there’s this fantastical world. This girl, the Yoshimi character, is dying of something. And these two guys are battling to come visit her in the hospital. And as one of the boyfriends envisions trying to save the girl, he enters this other dimension where Yoshimi is this Japanese warrior and the pink robots are an incarnation of her disease. It’s almost like the disease has to win in order for her soul to survive. Or something like that." On Broad-waaaay!

"The West Wing"/"Sports Night" scribe Aaron Sorkin has signed on to script the Yoshimi musical, while director/producer Des McAnuff will guide the production, according to EW.com. "When Des heard the record," said Coyne, "he heard a lot about death and loss and the triumph of your own optimism…he had an emotional attachment to it."

The musical, which may well include other songs from across the Lips’ catalogue, is still far from opening night, but the pink robot cogs have been set in motion.

I’m not familiar with the Flaming Lips’ album, but if Aorkin’s name is attached to this project, I’m all ears.

UPDATE:  Sorkin is currently workshopping his latest play, "The Farnsworth invention", at La Jolla Playhouse in San Diego.  The play, it seems, is about the inventor(s) of television.