Hugh Jackman is coming off having played Wolverine twice in two years, and he’s getting ready to do it again in 2016 and 2017, which is when (respectively) X-Men: Apocalypse and Wolverine 3 are due to reach theaters. However, even as 20th Century Fox continues to move full-steam ahead with its X-Men movie universe, the studio is looking to get production on a long-gestating Jackman project – the P.T. Barnum musical The Greatest Showman on Earth – into production by next year.
Greatest Showman on Earth is a musical biopic about Phineas Taylor Barnum, the American founder of Barnum & Bailey Circus as well as trail-blazer is the field of show business during the 19th century. Jackman has been loosely attached to play Mr. Barnum in the movie for around five years now, but between his X-Men acting duties and non-Wolverine film appearances (Real Steel, Les Misérables, Prisoners) – not to mention acting on-stage in plays such as The River – he hasn’t exactly been available to work on the project of late.
Deadline reports that Fox studio heads, after “much deliberation”, have started making deals to lock down cast and crew members for Greatest Showman on Earth, so that filming can get underway in New York by Summer 2015, somehow fitting around the shoots for Apocalypse and Wolverine 3.
The project will mark Michael Gracey’s first time calling the shots on a feature-length movie, since Walt Disney Pictures canned his originally-planned directorial debut the Snow White-inspired historical adventure Order of the Seven.
Producing is Laurence Mark, who teamed with Bill Condon on the musical Dreamgirls. They are working from the draft by Condon,
