Hugh Jackman (Logan) has hung up his claws as the Wolverine and replaced them with a top hat. Jackman returns to his musical roots with The Greatest Showman, a new film directed by first time director Michael Gracey. This has been a passion project for Hugh Jackman, who has tried to get it off the ground since 2009.
The film will centre on P.T. Barnum (Jackman) who helped transform show business into the massive enterprise it is today. It will showcase his rise from a common man with little to his name, to a visionary who created some of the greatest spectacles of all time.
It boasts an impressive cast, with key supporting roles from Michelle Williams (Manchester by the Sea) Zac Efron (Baywatch) Rebecca Ferguson (Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation) and Zendaya, a singer who has also turned to acting and will be co-starring in the new superhero film Spider-Man: Homecoming.
Release Date
The Greatest Showman is set to be released on New Years Day, which puts it in prime contention for the Baftas and the Academy Awards. It will be released a week after Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, so it will need solid reviews to do well at the box office.
Story
The plot centres on P.T. Barnum, a humble working man whose life gets turned upside down when he loses his job. Instead of pleading and begging for another job in a tough time in American history, he decides to create a stage show, birthing life into the name “show business”. He wants to create a variety show, full of singers, acrobats, dancers and all sorts of characters to entertain the masses.
P.T. Barnum was a real man, famous for founding the Barnum & Bailey Circus. Ironically, in May 2017 they closed their doors forever as the attendance at their shows reduced and animal rights activists protested heavily at their treatment of the wildlife they had perform in them.
Cast
Heavy hitting dramatic actors Hugh Jackman and Michelle Williams lead the cast, and a fantastic ensemble of key secondary stars, Zac Efron, Rebecca Ferguson and Zendaya supports them.
Zac Efron has been in a few comedy films like Dirty Grandpa and Baywatch over the last three years, and a lot of them haven’t been critically appreciated. However, with his role in this Oscar contender and the recent news he will star as infamous serial killer Ted Bundy in Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile, it looks like he’s back to giving drama films a second chance.
Production
Michael Gracey, a first time feature director who has worked as a visual effects compositor in the past, is directing the film. The Greatest Showman has been written by Jenny Bicks and Bill Condon, the man who recently directed the live action version of Beauty and the Beast.
It is being produced by Peter Chernin, Tonia Davis, Deb Dyer, Peter Kohn, Donald J. Lee Jr., Laurence Mark and Jenno Topping. More on the production can be found in the description of the trailer below.
First Impressions
The first trailer was recently released for The Greatest Showman and it showed a film that has Oscars written all over it. Big musical numbers, punchy lines of dialogue that tug on your heart strings, “Nobody ever made a difference by being like everybody else” as Jackman delivers it expertly.
With recent musical success in films like the latest Les Miserables and most notably La La Land, it’s a genre that’s back on its way to the top and The Greatest Showman could be the next film to write itself into the history books and win a Best Picture Academy Award.
