The Phantom of the Opera is there inside your mind—and will soon be on the big screen again.
Disney+ is developing a movie based on Gaston Leroux’s 1910 novel, Deadline reports, with an eye toward a young adult audience. Leroux’s book, which tells the story of a young Paris Opera singer who becomes the object of fixation of a disfigured musician, is considered an iconic work of 20th-century French literature.
The Disney+ adaptation will be directed and executive produced by Kenny Ortega, known for helming the films Newsies, Hocus Pocus, High School Musical, and Descendants. Giovanni M. Porta (At Midnight) is the screenwriter, working from a story that he wrote with Eric Bromberg (The 2nd).
The Phantom of the Opera has been adapted for film, television, and the stage many times. Rupert Julian directed a silent film adaptation starring Lon Chaney in 1925; other movie versions have been directed by Arthur Lubin in 1943, Terence Fisher in 1962, and Dwight H. Little in 1989.
The most famous adaptation of the novel is the musical written by Andrew Lloyd Webber, Charles Hart, and Richard Stilgoe. That play, which debuted in London in 1986 and in New York in 1988, was the longest-running show in Broadway history, lasting for 35 years and 13,981 performances. It won seven Tony Awards and spawned a 2004 film adaptation directed by Joel Schumacher and starring Gerard Butler, Emmy Rossum, and Patrick Wilson.
Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.
