The last time John Travolta appeared in a musical it was alongside Olivia Newton John as the smooth-operating matinee idol Danny in Grease, the most successful movie musical of all time.
Twenty-eight years later, the Hollywood star is going back to his toe-tapping roots to take on the role of Edna Turnblad in a new film version of Hairspray.
Due for release next year, the film will star Travolta in a role immortalised in the original film by the transvestite actor Divine who died in 1988, shortly after the film’s release.
Edna is the downtrodden mother of the film’s heroine, aspiring dancer Tracy Turnblad, who has yet to be cast. The producers of the film say they are looking for a newcomer to play the role.
But Queen Latifah, who was nominated for a Golden Globe and Oscar for her role in the musical Chicago, has been chosen to play the civil rights activist and dance show host Motormouth Maybelle.
”It’s long been a desire of ours to work with John Travolta and to have the opportunity to produce his return to movie musicals after three decades,” said producers Craig Zadan and Neil Meron in a statement. ”It’s a dream come true. This is our dream cast for the film, and bringing Travolta back into a musical after 30 years is so gratifying.”
Michael Lynne of New Line Cinema, the company behind the film added: ”They were our genuine first choices for the film. It is a challenge, trying to reinvent a stage show that was a reinvention of a film. The right casting is a big part of that.”
The original film, directed by John Waters, was released in 1988. The camp period piece spawned a stage musical, which has been produced around the world.
Hairspray is the latest departure for Travolta, whose career has taken him from the fleet-footed, street-strutting Tony Manero in Saturday Night Fever and Staying Alive to a string of bad comedies before he was cast in Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction.
That resurrected the 52-year-old actor’s career and he reclaimed his position as one of Hollywood’s biggest stars.
He was even able to make his pet project, the film Battlefield Earth, based on the sci-fi epic by the Scientology founder, L Ron Hubbard. Travolta and his wife, Kelly Preston, are prominent Scientologists. In the film he plays the leader of a group of aliens that enslave humanity on Earth.
In 1992 he wrote a children’s book entitled Propeller One-Way Night Coach about a boy in the 1950s who travels across the US.
Travolta, who was in negotiations about the role of Edna Turnblad for a year, opted for the part over a film version of Dallas, in which he was to have played JR Ewing. That film may now be made next year. – Guardian Unlimited Â