Once or twice a year, usually around Oscar season, a big budget film adaptation of a Broadway musical soars into movie theaters. Said films will usually star some serious A-list actors who aren’t necessarily known for their singing voice, as well as a few unknowns from the theater community. One of the most successful movie musicals in recent memory is 2012’s Les Miserables. Les Miz, one of most popular Broadway musicals of all time, remained fairly identical to the source material and resulted in a slew of award wins that season. Now it appears the time behind that epic musical drama are teaming up to bring another Broadway musical to the silver screen.
The Daily Mail is reporting that acclaimed director Danny Boyle is currently in talks to direct the big screen version of the Broadway musical Miss Saigon. Joining Boyle in the team behind Miss Saigon are producers Tim Bevan and Eric Fellner. This seems to be the perfect fit for a few reasons.
To start, Tim Bevan and Eric Fellner are no strangers to adapting a musical for the big screen. The two also served as producers, under their company Working Title Films, for Les Miserables, which we all know was a massive success.
Additionally, both Les Miz and Miss Saigon were written by the same famous songwriting team: Claude-Michel Schonberg and Alain Boublil. The duo are Broadway and West End royalty, having written a slew of dramatic musicals which have a habit of running for a decade straight. Since we’ve already seen a collaboration between Schonberg, Boublil, and Working Title Films, the team clearly works well together and can surely deliver another great musical movie.
While Danny Boyle has never stepped into the world of movie musicals, he has an outstanding directing resume. After gaining notoriety for Trainspotting, which be receiving a sequel in 2017, Boyle has a habit of directing Academy Award winning films. These Oscar nominated films include Slumdog Millionaire, for which Boyle received an Oscar for directing, as well as 127 Hours, and Steve Jobs. The bottom line is that the man directs amazing films, and can deliver the nominations that a Miss Saigon film will likely be hungry for.
Miss Saigon is a musical drama that ran in the West End in 1989, and Broadway starting in 1991. The West End production would run for 10 years and over 4,000 performances.
The musical, which is an adaptation from the opera Madame Butterfly, revolves around the doomed relationship between a Vietnamese girl named Kim, and a US soldier named Chris during the final days of the Vietnam War. After falling in love, Chris vows to take Kim back to America with him, but the Fall of Saigon occurs and chaos ensues. The musical spans four years, and highlights America’s role in the Vietnam War, as well as the repercussions from our involvement on both American and Vietnamese people.
As you can tell, Miss Saigon is similarly tragic and equally as heavy as Les Miserables. Additionally, both musicals are almost entirely sung through, rather than containing a mixture of dialogue and song.
We’ll continue to update you on the upcoming Miss Saigon movie as more details become public.
