Downton: The musical are the stars’ voices up to it?
DOWNTON Abbey was so successful that the advertising revenues it brought in helped transform the fortunes of ITV. And now the costume drama could be re-invented in a surprising way.
Its creator, Julian Fellowes, is considering turning the series into a West End musical.
But the actors turned into household names by the series face disappointment, as Lord Fellowes claims they can’t sing.
‘They’ve talked about a Downton musical,’ the scriptwriter discloses at the IWC Schaffhausen Filmmakers Bursary Award, held at the Rosewood hotel in London. ‘There are various people interested in doing it, but it would mean a different cast as I don’t remember any of them as particularly gifted singers.’
His comments are likely to upset American actress Elizabeth McGovern, who played Cora, the Countess of Grantham, because she’s the lead singer for a rock band, Sadie And The Hotheads.
Another crooner in the Downton cast is Michelle Dockery, who played the Countess’s daughter Lady Mary. Dockery has joined McGovern on stage at her band’s gigs and was asked by Fellowes to sing in a Christmas episode of Downton.
Fellowes has experience of turning a screen project into a hit musical as he wrote the dialogue for School Of Rock.
That stage show, by andrew lloyd Webber, is an adaptation of the Hollywood film of the same name and will open in london next month after a successful run on Broadway.
The sets for Downton have been maintained at ealing studios in West london in anticipation of a film being made of the drama, the final episode of which was broadcast on Christmas Day last year.
The film is expected to go ahead with the original cast, including Hugh Bonneville, who played the morally upright earl of Grantham.
‘It’s very likely,’ Fellowes says of the film. ‘But I’ve been saying that for a number of years because I think it has a reasonably assured audience whereas [with] most films you’re just chucking your bread on the water. I hope it happens — personally I think it will.’