A young adult adaptation of Phantom of the Opera is in development at Disney+. The original Gaston Leroux novel is set in Paris’ Palais Garnier Opera House, which is being haunted by a vengeful “Phantom” who takes a young singer under his wing and has been adapted to the screen many times since it was originally published as a serial between 1909 and 1910. The most well-known Phantom of the Opera adaptation is likely the 1986 Andrew Lloyd Webber stage musical, which was made into a 2004 movie directed by Joel Schumacher and starring Gerard Butler and Emmy Rossum.
Per Deadline, Disney+ is in early development on a young adult reimagining of The Phantom of the Opera. High School Musical and Descendants director Kenny Ortega is attached to helm the project, which was penned by At Midnight‘s Giovanni M. Porta from a story the writer conceived with Eric Bromberg. Ortega will also executive produce the project, which could potentially become a franchise in the vein of his previous Disney collaborations, which also includes the 1993 cult classic Hocus Pocus.
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This report does not indicate whether this new version of the story is intended to be a new original musical. If it is, it could become the first musical adaptation to hit the screen in some time. Although the best-known version of the novel is a musical, it is most frequently adapted into horror movies with de-emphasized musical elements, including the 1925 silent classic starring Lon Chaney, a 1989 slasher-inflected offering starring A Nightmare on Elm Street‘s Robert Englund, and Italian horror master Dario Argento’s Phantom of the Opera from 1998.
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Beyond the 1974 Brian De Palma cult classic Phantom of the Paradise, prominent musical adaptations of the Leroux novel have largely been limited to various interpretations of the Webber musical. The most recent original musical interpretation came in 2011 with the loose French-language animated adaptation A Monster in Paris. This would leave plenty of room for Ortega’s version to carve out a niche as a new musical interpretation, should it choose to embrace that genre.
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Young adult reimaginings of the story have been accomplished before, including the 1989 teen slasher Phantom of the Mall: Eric’s Revenge and the 2000 Disney Channel movie Phantom of the Megaplex. However, transforming the iconic Phantom of the Opera into a franchise might be a tall order, even for the man behind the first three Descendants and High School Musical movies, kicking off both smash-hit franchises. The original story is somewhat self-contained, which is why no adaptation has yet developed into a robust long-running franchise, so the adaptation may require considerable alterations in order to better fit a franchise structure.
Source: Deadline
