Legendary Action Director John Woo Is Now Directing a Musical with the Sparks Brothers
John Woo, the director behind action films such as Hard Boiled, Face/Off, The Killer, Mission: Impossible II, and Silent Night, is doing something very different with his next film project.
The filmmaker is set to make a musical with Sparks, a cult pop duo also known as Ron and Russell Mael, behind such songs as ‘This Town Ain’t Big Enough For The Both Of Us’.
Woo made the announcement during an interview with Empire, saying: “My next project is actually a half-musical. I’m going to be working with the Sparks Brothers, who wrote the script and songs — we are just starting work on some changes to the script.”
The title of the film may end up being X Crucior, and it’s described by Focus Features as a ‘musical epic’. Woo has always wanted to make a musical and came close back in the 1990s with an adaptation of The Phantom Of The Opera. That was going to be a big-budget musical starring John Travolta.
Woo goes on to say that his collaboration with Sparks will require a change-up from his usual production style and jokes: “It will be my first movie where I don’t need to hire a stuntman.”
The work of the Sparks band was previously chronicled in Edgar Wright’s documentary The Sparks Brothers, while they collaborated with Leos Carax on ‘rock opera’ musical Annette.
Woo has a few other projects in the pipeline and he teases that one of them is a Western: “I have a Western project; a wonderful script from Brian Helgeland. It has a lot of romance and a lot of emotion and exciting action.”
Sparks recently shared a photo with Woo on X with the hashtag, ‘#xcrucior’. What do you think about Woo directing a musical with the Sparks Brothers?