There were tremors in the comfortable gated compounds of Bollywood last night when it emerged that a Hollywood company had teamed up with Sony Pictures to produce a Bollywood-style musical, produced in LA and filmed in Vancouver. “Following the success of movies such as Mamma Mia, High School Musical and Sweeney Todd, it’s clear there’s a new appetite for musicals in the west that has been neglected,” said a spokesman for New Moon.
Happy Days and Nights is a big budget production slated to star Robert Pattinson and Kristin Stewart from Twilight in a story said to be loosely based on Romeo and Juliet. AR Rahman has promised to produce a fusion musical score that will span the world. Two versions will be made – one with a tragic ending for western markets and the other with a happy ending for the North African, Middle East and South Asian markets. “The rapidly growing economies of the east provide an avenue for revenue that western production houses are only just waking up to,” explained Phyllida Lloyd, the director. “This is just the first of a proposed series of three musicals that New Moon will put into production this year.”
Miley Cyrus and Mitch Musso are scheduled to appear in Fast Lane with Billy Ray Cyrus and Angelina Jolie scheduled to play the parents of a troubled teenager who gets led astray by a fast-living party-girl, who has to face tragedy before discovering true friendship. Up-and-coming singer Paloma Faith is scheduled to star in Destiny, a movie about an innocent young woman from Ciudad Juarez, who is kidnapped by people traffickers and forced into prostitution before eventually being rescued by her childhood friend who never gives up hope of finding her after she disappears. But is the woman he finds the same woman he lost? “Isn’t it significant that this major announcement should have been made on this day of all days,” asked an industry spokesman.
