Add Category
Updated
The all-singing, all-dancing Hugh Jackman has said Hollywood is once again embracing musicals after shunning original scripts for more than two decades.
The Australian star will this month release his latest film, The Greatest Showman — a musical biopic about circus manager PT Barnum set in the 1800s.
The film contains original songs, in a move Jackman said broke a long-running trend in Hollywood.
"When we had this green-lit, there hadn't been an original movie musical — so music no-one knows — for 23 years," he told News Breakfast.
"It was considered just too big a risk.
"Generally it will be something that was a hit on Broadway or using existing music, like Moulin Rouge."
It took about seven years for The Greatest Showman to get backing, and it was originally conceived as a straight biopic before director Michael Gracey decided to make it a musical.
It was put into production about the same time as the hit La La Land, breaking a drought on original musicals that Jackman said went back to Disney's 1992 film Newsies.
That live-action flick ranks among the lowest grossing films ever made by the studio and was panned by critics when it was released.
Jackman credits director Baz Luhrmann — who created Moulin Rouge — and the success of La La Land for generating renewed interest in musicals in Hollywood.
But he said it was still hard to convince the studios to take them on, especially if the writing team was unknown.
"They were out for a Bruno Mars and all these guys," he said of getting The Greatest Showman off the ground.
"They pulled me aside and said, 'We really want you to go to (singing coach) Liz Caplan, who can do Broadway but can also do pop', because that's where this music exists.
"My 12-year-old daughter should think, 'This is the greatest,' and a 90-year-old should go, 'Oh, I love this music.'
"It should be for everyone, it should be broad, broad, broad mass appeal.
"That's sort of where we went."
The Australian export made his mark on Hollywood playing the Wolverine superhero over seven X-Men films, going back to 2000.
He had also taken a lead role in the 2012 film adaptation of Les Miserables, but said Hollywood had not given him a chance to show off the singing and dancing that he was known for at home.
"I'd been known around the world for Wolverine," he said.
"Anyone in Australia knows I'm more at home on a stage, singing and dancing, than I am fighting with claws coming out of my hand.
"So it seemed weird that my movie career was sort of so weighted to this thing so many miles away from me, and the thing that I had done a lot of I never got to do."
Topics: arts-and-entertainment, music, film-movies, human-interest, australia
First posted