X Crucior: John Woo directs a new Sparks musical

Not quite as far along as Annette was when I started that thread, but it's getting there. Formal announcement was last year and this new Sparks interview has an update:

Says Russell, “At the beginning of last year, we fortunately met John Woo and had him hear this new project that we were working on called ‘Excruciary.’ He came over, sat through the two-hour presentation of the whole story and all of the music and said, ‘I really just love this and want to do this.’ We were just so excited, because, first of all, John Woo doing a musical seems really incongruous, but then John Woo doing a Sparks musical seems even one step beyond that. But after working with him for a year now, we really get along well with him and really like him a lot, just as a person, along with obviously appreciating what he’s done for the history of cinema. We were working with him for all of last year, refining some elements of the screenplay, and we’re all pretty happy with where it’s at now, so we’re just hoping that we’re gonna have the green light soon to kind of actually put it into production.”

“We’ve spent the last year kind of on and off working with John to sculpt a few things,” adds Ron. “He had a few ideas that he wanted to incorporate, and with a movie musical, especially one where it’s continuous singing, anytime there’s a new idea, it’s more complicated than just adding it to a screenplay. You have to actually re-record something and figure out a new arrangement for it. But his ideas were all really incredible and very, very visual. So we’re going through the period now trying to complete the financing of it — that’s always kind of the most difficult part, at least for the projects we’ve worked on, which is limited in number, I acknowledge. But we have the backing of just an amazing director and then also Frank Marshall and Patrick Crowley, two incredible producers. And so it is at that stage where everything is kind of out of our hands as far as getting the financing for the film, but we couldn’t be more excited about any project. And kind of having the validation of people of that caliber is an incredible thing. John Woo just has such an amazing sense of cinema, and it is gonna be an amazing film.”

Forgot to link the interview!

https://variety.com/2025/music/news/sparks-tour-new-album-mad-interview-1236355069/

what the-!

Yeah it's been bubbling under for a while, there was formal confirmation of it all last year. (Keep in mind that thirty years back they were hoping to do an adaptation of Mai the Psychic Girl with Tsui Hark! So this almost feels like a makeup for that in the same way Annette kinda makes up for the failed collaboration with Jacques Tati in the 70s, Confusion.)

this feels like it could be really fun and insane

John Woo doing a musical seems really incongruous

The heroic bloodshed stuff Woo is known for internationally is really just one aspect of his work, like any auteur working within a commercial mold he made all kinds of films, including dozens of straight comedies - dunno if he made any musicals but I'm sure some of those must have at least had elements.

I'm more worried about his health - caught a lot of rumors about that last US movie being very close to ghost directed due to this.