My girlfriend bought me tickets for the opening night Newcastle performance of
Batman Live in July for my birthday and from the looks of today's media launch at the London O2 Arena for the £12 million spectacle, it's going to be money well spent. Well it got me excited at least. I've just shared the images with Simon who tells me that the designs of the characters are 'from all other the place in DC Comics history' suggesting that it's a mix of Batman Returns (Danny Devito's Penguin), Batman Forever's Batman (though he looks like Michael Keaton), the modern day 'Hush' takes on Catwoman, The Riddler and Poision Ivy, a kind of Jack Nicholson-esque suited Joker and he couldn't really pinpoint the others.... but said the whole thing 'has a Joel Schmaucher feel.' I said it's a live-action cartoon by all accounts and aimed towards kids, so a pantomime feel is to be expected. Having said that, the expansive and expensive Gotham City set designs (including a 100ft stage and a Joker circus tent) and the high quality costumes, point towards a production that is far more elaborate than I could ever have imagined. Or hoped. Images below the video and after the jump... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nf9mfAPPyhA The tour starts in July and tours the U.K, Ireland and Europe before the U.S. leg begins next year. The media launch is just happening so I'm adding images all the time. These are the best so far from
Collider (via
HERE).
From
The Daily Mail...
From
The Daily Telegraph...
Sadly there's no image yet of the new Batmobile created by Formula One car designer Gordon Murray. Creative director Anthony Van Laast said he doesn't expect the show to run into the same problems as Broadway's highly troubled and vastly more expensive (£30 million more) Spider-Man musical that is still languishing after six months of 'previews';
"It's a very different show to ours... The only comparison is they're about heroes. We're in an arena... We can fly wherever we want."
We have to remember that Batman Live is NOT a musical and won't feature any songs. Set and props designer Es Devlin;
"This hasn't been done before on an arena scale, so things are going to have to be enormous... Batman is not a superhero - he can't fly so we don't have to pretend he's doing extraordinary things... But there's tons of aerial performance like zip wires and commando lines."
Rehearsals will take place for three weeks in Nottingham before it's premiere in Manchester MEN on July 19th. It reaches the O2 in August.