MY MOVIE WEEK... with Mike Shaw

Some interesting theatre-related news this week, with a show heading for the screen, and a movie heading for the stage...

First up is a stage musical version of School of Rock, the 2004 film starring Jack Black. Andrew Lloyd Webber owns the rights to the story and last week let slip that he is working on a stage adaptation. The man behind Cats, Phantom of the Opera and Starlight Express, said: “Another thing that I’ve just got the rights to that I am very excited about – there may be songs for me in it, but it’s obviously got songs in it as it stands – is that movie School Of Rock.”

There are no solid details available yet, but it will be interesting to see what direction the show goes in.

The movie was packed with classic rock songs by the likes of AC/DC, so is Andrew Lloyd Webber going to keep them intact, fill it with all his own compositions, or create some weird hybrid?

The second story concerns the popular jukebox musical Jersey Boys, which is being scrutinised by Clint Eastwood.

The actor/director has been trying to get a new version of A Star Is Born off the ground for a couple of years now, but now he’s attached to this second musical movie, which has been kicking around for just as long.

The film, which will be based on the stage show that tells the story of Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons, has been bounced around directors and between studios, but now Clint is in talks with Warner Bros to get it going.

If it does all work out, Eastwood will tackle Jersey Boys before returning to A Star Is Born and resuming his search for a suitable male lead.

Horror fans might want to cover their eyes. The prequel to The Shining is progressing well, and now has an official title: The Overlook Hotel.

Not only does the project now have a new name, but it also has a new writer in the form of Glen Mazzara who did great work on The Walking Dead and The Shield. There’s not much else in the way of details, but the news comes at a time when The Shining is getting renewed attention. The film has just been re-released, a fan theory movie called Room 237 is doing the rounds, and Stephen King’s sequel, Doctor Sleep is due to hit shelves later this year.

However, things might not go entirely smoothly.

King famously didn’t think much of Stanley Kubrick’s original movie, and has questioned the validity of the prequel.

He said: “There’s a real question about whether or not they have the rights to Before The Play, which was the prologue cut from the book, because the epilogue to the book was called After The Play. So they were bookends, and there was really scary stuff in that prologue that wouldn’t make a bad movie.”

He continued: “Am I eager to see that happen? No I am not. And there’s some real question about what rights Warner Bros. does still have. The Shining is such an old book now that the copyright comes back to me. Arguably, the film rights lapse — so we’ll see. We’re looking into that. I’m not saying I would put a stop to the project, because I’m sort of a nice guy. When I was a kid, my mother said, ‘Stephen if you were a girl, you’d always be pregnant.’ I have a tendency to let people develop things. I’m always curious to see what will happen. But you know what? I would be just as happy if it didn’t happen.”

Pointless remake

Another film that’s getting existing fans all riled up is the remake of the 1991 move Point Break that starred Patrick Swayze and Keanu Reeves. It’s been in development for years, and many hoped it would just go away quietly, but then it turned out Salt’s Kurt Wimmer had written the screenplay, and now that the strangely named Ericson Core has been signed up as director, it’s clear that it’s going to happen, whether we like it or not.

If you haven’t heard of Core before, you’re not alone – he’s primarily a cinematographer, with credits on The Fast And The Furious and Daredevil. He has directed TV and the American football movie Invincible, with Mark Wahlberg.

The Point Break remake seems to have come out of plans for a sequel, that were hastily changed following the death of Swayze, and is apparently set in the world of ‘international extreme sports’, again involving a cop undercover.

So, screenwriter and director are sorted; the next job is to find a cast, because filming is due to begin at the end of the year.