Entertainment
The Phantom of the Opera coming to TV screens as backdrop to new murder mystery series The Show Must Go On-Tori Brazier-Entertainment – Metro
Not on your bingo card for today, was it?
The music (and murder mystery) of the night… (Picture: Rex/Getty)
If all you’ve ever dreamed of is a very specific murder mystery cross-over with Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber’s smash musical hit The Phantom of the Opera, then you are weirdly in luck.
In perhaps one of the less predictable projects in television right now, NBC streaming platform Peacock has announced The Show Must Go On.
The hour-long anthology series marks the television debut of one of Sir Andrew’s most popular stage shows, after it was made into a 2004 film starring Emmy Rossum, Gerard Butler and Patrick Wilson.
It is not however, as you may have guessed, a straightforward adaptation.
The Cinderella composer and EGOT (yes, he’s beaten Adele to it) has teamed up with Zoey’s Extraordinary Playbook creator Austin Winsberg and Lionsgate among others to deliver what is described as a ‘darkly comedic murder mystery anthology series’.
The premise for each season is pretty cool (and flexible), taking place in the days running up to a live, televised production of an event, taking in a new murder and cast each time, according to Deadline.
Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical has been keeping millions entertained in theatres worldwide since 1986 (Picture: Getty)
The composer was wooed into coming onboard for the project, and could even crop up on screen himself apparently (Picture: Jeff J Mitchell/POOL/AFP)
Season’s one build-up is to, of course, The Phantom Of the Opera Live!, the story of which works quite well for a murder mystery, considering the lead character’s ‘Opera Ghost’ shenanigans, let alone all the stuff that will happen for the characters outside the fictionalised version of Phantom they’re putting on.
To put musical fans’ (or phans’) expectations in check from the off, The Show Must Go On won’t feature the long-running West End and Broadway show in its entirety, but it will feature several of its most iconic scenes and songs, such as The Music of the Night, insiders told the publication.
There are even unconfirmed reports of a possible cameo from Sir Andrew himself…
Producer Robert Greenblatt, a Tony Award winning theatre bod who brought several live musical broadcasts to NBC while serving as its chairman, explained: ‘Austin and I have a connection with musicals. When he pitched me the idea to do a murder mystery against a live musical backdrop, I thought it was perfect for me
The sumptuous 2004 film starred Gerard Butler and Emmy Rossum (Picture: Moviestore/Rex/Shutterstock)
The Opera Ghost did it with a sword on the staircase…or something (Picture: Alex Bailey/Really Useful/Warner Brothers/Kobal/Rex/Shutterstock)
‘So I reached out to Andrew Lloyd Webber to see if he would let us use Phantom of the Opera, which has never been done before. I pitched him the idea and he loved it and on got on board.’
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The Phantom of the Opera is Broadway’s longest running show in history, debuting in 1988. It opened on the West End in 1986 but was pipped to the title of longest-running musical by Les Misérables, which began in 1985.
The longest-running show overall is Agatha Christie thriller The Mousetrap, which has been running in London’s theatre district – bar a Covid-related interruption – since 1952.
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