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| NJC: Phantom 2 premieres in 3 continents 2009 | |
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rockfenris2005 10:07 am UTC 12/29/08 |
Andrew Lloyd Webber has composed a sequel to his most successful musical, the Phantom of the Opera, and has disclosed that it will be premiered across three continents in 2009. By Lucy Cockcroft Last Updated: 8:31AM GMT 29 Dec 2008 Since Michael Crawford first played the Phantom in London two decades ago, the show has been performed before 80 million theatregoers in 124 cities across the world and earned more than £3.5 billion at the box office. Now Lord Lloyd Webber has announced that "the button is pushed" on the sequel, entitled "Phantom: Love Never Dies". It will be premiered at the end of next year in the West End, Broadway and an as yet unconfirmed Asian city at the same time, making theatrical history. Lord Lloyd Webber said: "I don't think you could do this if it wasn't the sequel to Phantom ... We've been into the feasibility of rehearsing three companies at once and opening very fast in the three territories. "The one which really interests me would be China ... I think to open Love Never Dies in Shanghai would be an enormous thing." The sequel will be set around ten years after the first instalment, during which time the Phantom has relocated from the Paris Opera of Gaston Leroux's original novel to Coney Island in Brooklyn, a beachside amusement resort for New Yorkers. Lord Lloyd Webber told The Times: "It was the place. Even Freud went because it was so extraordinary ... people who were freaks and oddities were drawn towards it because it was a place where they could be themselves." The production has not yet been cast, but he disclosed: "We are pretty clear who our Phantom is going to be – I can't say who." Candidates include Gerard Butler, who played the part in Joel Schumacher's 2004 film adaptation, and Hugh Jackman, the star of Baz Luhrmann's film Australia, who has appeared on stage in Sunset Boulevard, Oklahoma! and The Boy from Oz, for which he won Best Actor in a musical Tony Award. The Phantom of the Opera musical is now the longest running Broadway show in history, and the most lucrative entertainment enterprise of all time, outstripping even Titanic, the most successful film. | |
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