Phantom Goes to Coney Island? Lloyd Webber Spills Sequel Secrets

Andrew Lloyd Webber has big plans for his most popular character, telling the Times of London that he hopes to open a long-awaited sequel to The Phantom of the Opera simultaneously in London, on Broadway and in an Asian city, possibly Shanghai. Titled Phantom: Love Never Dies, the sequel takes place in Coney Island and will be ready for the stage by the end of 2009, directed by Jack O’Brien.

“We’ve been into the feasibility of rehearsing three companies at once and opening very fast in the three territories,” Lloyd Webber told the London newspaper. “The one which really interests me [in the Far East] would be China ... I think to open Love Never Dies in Shanghai would be an enormous thing.”

The composer hinted that a big name will play the title role in the sequel, saying, “We are pretty clear who our Phantom is going to be—I can’t say who.” The paper speculated that Gerard Butler, who starred in the 2004 movie version, and Hugh Jackman, who is on the wish list for just about every musical project that comes up, might take on the role created by Michael Crawford.

According to Lloyd Webber, the sequel will be set a decade or so after The Phantom of the Opera and will reunite the title character with his true love, soprano Christine Daae, in Coney Island. “It was the place,” Lloyd Webber told the Times of the Brooklyn beach resort. “Even Freud went because it was so extraordinary ... people who were freaks and oddities were drawn towards it because it was a place where they could be themselves.”

Last April, Ben Elton, who collaborated with Lloyd Webber on The Beautiful Game, was announced as the book writer for the Phantom sequel, joining lyricist Glenn Slater Sister Act and designer Bob Crowley.