Second Worst Idea Ever?

The worst idea was turing High Fidelity into a Broadway Musical (it's already closed).

The second worst idea ever is Andrew Lloyd Webber writing a sequel to the Phantom of the Opera. SayWA???

The third worst idea ever is calling it "The Phantom of Manhattan." Apparently A-Llod (as I'm sure he's doing this for the money, just like A-Rod) started work on this with author Frederick Forsyth (who wrote the awesome book Day of the Jackal).

A-Llod turned away to write another musical and so Forsyth published "The Phantom of Manhattan"--a novel about the Phantom escaping Paris and running away to New York. (Me saying "SayWA?" right here is so obvious I'm not going to do it).

It is very common to hear theater folks making fun of Phantom. The main character is hardly ever on stage, they so obviously use dubbed music and stage doubles, all the music basically sounds the same ... but my biggest problem with it is that the book was so much better. Like way better. And the Phantom is an incredible villain, not just a lame recluse with a bad case of unrequitted love. Who knew a French book from 1910 would be so readable?

(Interestingly, the world wide box office for Phantom is higher than Titanic, making it--supposedly--the most lucrative entertainment enterprise of all time, according to Wikipedia.)

Anyway, the "Phantom in Manhattan" sounds really really really bad.