The buzz on Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire is huge, mostly because the movie is really, really fucking good (read my Sundance review right here). And one of the people getting big returns from that buzz is director Lee Daniels, who went from zero to hero overnight in Park City, Utah. Daniels is still trying to figure out what to do next, but the biggie in his future looks to be an adaptation of the Broadway musical Miss Saigon. At least according to Variety.
Despite my general like of musicals I’ve never become familiar with Miss Saigon, so we must turn to Wikipedia for our summary:
It is a modern adaptation of Giacomo Puccini’s opera Madame Butterfly, and similarly tells the tragic tale of a doomed romance involving an Asian woman abandoned by her American lover. The setting of the plot is relocated to the 1970s Saigon during the Vietnam War, and Madame Butterfly’s American Lieutenant and Japanese geisha coupling is replaced by a romance between an American GI and a Vietnamese bar girl.
Miss Saigon is from the same dudes who brought us Les Mis (a musical I do like very much!) and is the 10th longest running show in Broadway history. So I guess that means it’s pretty good.
Paula Wagner – the lady who kept Tom Cruise in check all those years – is producing, and it’s being developed specifically as a Daniels project. Of course the size and nature of the project means that Daniels may well sign on to do something else in the meantime.