The Broadway and Hollywood classic The King and I is to be turned into a big-budget Chinese-language stage musical, a Hong Kong production company said on Friday.
Music Nation said it would take its adaptation of the famed 1956 musical by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II on tour around China, Hong Kong and Taiwan.
”The project is still at a preliminary stage,” said a spokesperson for the company headed by Richard Li, son of Hong Kong tycoon Li Ka-shing.
Hong Kong newspaper Apple Daily said the Mandarin-language show, costing more than 100-million Hong Kong dollars ($12,8-million) to produce, would premier in Hong Kong next year.
It said Hong Kong pop star and screen heart-throb Andy Lau had been approached to play the king, the role originally played by Yul Brynner both on Broadway and in the film, which also starred Deborah Kerr.
The King and I, based on the book Anna and the King of Siam by Margaret Landon, is about widowed English school teacher Anna Leonowens who travels to Thailand to be the live-in governess of the King of Siam’s children in 1862.
Leonowens and the King fall in love, and she later stays on to offer help and advice to the new ruler and Prince of Siam following the death of the king.
The book claims to recount the experiences of the British governess, but several films based on it have previously been banned in Thailand on grounds that it distorted facts and insulted the king.
The last film remake was Anna and the King, released in 1999 which starred Jodie Foster and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon star Chow Yun-fat. – AFP
