The Phantom Of The Opera will go murder mystery mode in a new Peacock series
The Show Must Go On hails from Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist creator Austin Winsberg
There’s another comedic murder mystery series on the way, this time featuring the songs of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Phantom Of The Opera. The Show Must Go On comes from Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist creator Austin Winsberg, with support from producer Robert Greenblatt and Lloyd Webber himself.
Per Deadline, season one follows the making of a fictitious version of Lloyd Webber’s mega-hit: The Phantom of The Opera Live! The play will not be performed in its entirety, but it will serve as the backdrop for the whodunnit.
The official description reads: “As if putting on a giant, live, beloved musical isn’t enough of a challenge, imagine how hard it will be with endless production problems, warring stars, mounting network pressures, and, oh yeah, the gruesome and untimely death of one of the leads. With a murderer on the loose, and a Phantom to contend with, the whole cast and crew will have to come together to put on the greatest show of their lives… that is—if they can live long enough to make it to the final curtain.”
“Austin and I have a connection with musicals. When he pitched me the idea to do a murder mystery against a live musical backdrop, I thought it was perfect for me,” Greenblatt says of the new show.” So I reached out to Andrew Lloyd Webber to see if he would let us use Phantom Of The Opera, which has never been done before. I pitched him the idea and he loved it and got on board.”
Given the first season warrants a renewal, the anthology series will take us behind the scenes of a different production with a whole new cast each season.
Call it the Knives Out effect, because since the film’s release in 2019, ensemble whodunnits have been coming down the production pipeline in droves. Hulu’s got Only Murders In The Building (whose third season will be set against a Broadway production) and Wedding Season. HBO Max hosts The Flight Attendant. Apple TV+ has The Afterparty. Hell, even Roku had 2020's Mapleworth Murders.
This is the second murder mystery series Peacock has in development, with Rian Johnson’s Poker Face on the way, starring Natasha Lyonne, Adrien Brody, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Jameela Jamil, Stephanie Hsu, Simon Helberg, and Dascha Polanco. With a second Knives Out film on the way, get ready to sleuth and sleuth some more.