Danny Boyle In Talks To Direct 'Miss Saigon' Movie

Danny Boyle is a very busy man. Just this week we heard was planning a return to television with Trust, a limited series for FX about the Getty family. And we know he's still getting the pieces together for Trainspotting 2, which is expected to shoot later this year. But according to a new report, he's also working on an adaptation of Miss Saigon, the classic stage musical by Claude-Michel Schönberg and Alain Boublil. The Daily Mail's Baz Bamigboye (via The Playlist) reports Boyle is in negotiations to direct Miss Saigon for Cameron Mackintosh and Working Title's Tim Bevan and Eric Fellner. All three producers previously worked together on Tom Hooper's 2012 adaptation of that other Broadway staple, Les Misérables – which, as it happens, is also based on a musical by Schönberg and Boublil. There's no word yet on who wrote the Miss Saigon screenplay, or which actors might star.

The Miss Saigon movie has been in development for several years already. As of 2013, Lee Daniels was trying to get the project off the ground, but it seems he's quietly departed since then. On the stage, Miss Saigon recently enjoyed a West End revival that closed in February 2016, and is now on track for a Broadway revival to open in 2017. The show originally premiered in 1989.

Based on Giacomo Puccini's classic opera Madame Butterfly, Miss Saigon unfolds in Vietnam during the war, following an American G.I. named Chris and a 17-year-old Vietnamese bargirl named Kim. The two fall desperately in love, but are abruptly separated when Chris returns to America. Though the musical remains popular, it's not without controversy — it's been criticized for its racist and sexist overtones and its promotion of Orientalist stereotypes.

Although Miss Saigon will be Boyle's first time directing a full-fledged musical feature, the director has expressed his interest in the genre before. He flirted with a big-screen adaptation of My Fair Lady at one point several years ago. More recently, he was planning a musical biopic of David Bowie, only for Bowie to turn him down.