Movie Musicals are certainly not a new phenomenon – we have watched the likes of Fred and Ginger, Mickey and Judy, Frank Sinatra and Gene Kelly sing and dance their way across the silver screen for decades.
Movie Musicals are certainly not a new phenomenon – we have watched the likes of Fred and Ginger, Mickey and Judy, Frank Sinatra and Gene Kelly sing and dance their way across the silver screen for decades. However, a resurgence of blockbuster musical films really only began again with Baz Lurhmann’s Moulin Rouge! (2001) starring Ewan McGregor and Nicole Kidman, and Chicago (2002) starring Catherine Zeta-Jones and Renee Zellweger. Since then we have had movie musicals like Hairspray (featuring John Travolta), Sweeney Todd (featuring Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter), Mamma Mia! (with Pierce Brosnan, Colin Firth and Meryl Streep), Phantom of The Opera (Emmy Rossum and Gerard Butler, Nine (Nicole Kidman… again, Penelope Cruz, Fergie, and Dame Judi Dench… (Of course, we cannot forget the “musical” episodes on various TV series including Buffy, Scrubs and How I Met Your Mother, High School Musical 1, 2 and 3…. And GLEE! – with as many celebrities as they can muster – … but they are another story) Many great musicals have had the movie treatment but one famous musical has been neglected, thus far. After playing theatres around the world for nearly thirty years, the music from this 19th century French revolution story (based on the epic novel by Victor Hugo) became one of the most popular shows of our time. Not everyone will know the story necessarily, but even Susan Boyle fans will remember the title after she delivered her rendition of “I Dream a Dream” to the unsuspecting public: yes we’re talking about Les Misérables. The musical version of Les Misérables, simply called “Les Mis” by those in the know, is the story of survival against political appreciation, spanning 17 years leading to the Paris uprising of 1832. It’s seems unusual that one of the world’s longest running musicals would take so long to reach the silver screen but it seems a director is in talks to make it happen. Tom Hooper. Hooper has already directed period dramas John Adams and Elizabeth for TV but made it big directing 2010’s The King’s Speech, the story of stuttering Royal (Colin Firth) and Geoffrey Rush as the speech therapist who helped him. The film won the Best Picture and a Best Director for Hooper at the Oscars, and his past work indicates he’s qualified to bring the joy of the people’s misery to the big screen. There are also rumours of potential casting including Marion Cotillard, Anne Hathaway and Robert Downey Jr. Cotillard had already sung in the movie Nine, Hathaway was almost cast in Tim Burton’s Sweeny Todd and Downey Jr did a duet with Sting in an episode of Ally McBeal. Even though the director is in talks, there is no word yet on production starting, a realise date or if Susan Boyle will have a cameo (I see her either as a bakery or a lady of the night) however fans of the musical can rest easy knowing that they will hear the people sing sooner rather than later.