King Kong: stage version aims for B'way in 2013

Carmen Pavlovic, C.E.O. of Global Creatures, the company behind the phenomenal world-wide success, 'Walking with Dinosaurs - the Arena Spectacular,' has announced that a creative team has been assembled and work has begun on King Kong - Live on Stage, an entirely new production conceived for the Broadway stage. The show aims to arive on Broadway in 2013 and a schedule is expected to be announced shortly.

King Kong - Live on Stage is authorized by the estate of Merian C. Cooper (Creator of 'King Kong' and director of the 1933 film).

King Kong - Live on Stage is the latest project from the Australian-based Global Creatures, an international entertainment group that develops new theatrical productions to take to audiences all around the world. Their animatronics arm, The Creature Technology Company invents and deploys the latest in animatronic design. Global Creatures is the company behind the hugely successful 'Walking with Dinosaurs - the Arena Spectacular,' which established a new entertainment genre that has been seen by millions of people and broken box office records in Australia, Europe, Asia and North America since its inception in 2007. Earlier this year, Global Creatures announced a collaboration with DreamWorks Animation to conceive and execute an arena show based on the film 'How to Train Your Dragon.'

To bring King Kong to the stage, Global Creatures has brought together an award-winning, international creative team regarded for their work in theatre and opera.

Directed by Daniel Kramer and written by Tony nominee Craig Lucas with new music by BAFTA winner and Grammy nominee Marius de Vries (who will also arrange the period songs featured in the production), the creative team for King Kong - Live on Stage also includes Helpmann Award-winner Peter England (Production Design), Sonny Tilders (Creature Design), John O'Connell (Choreography),Tony Award-winner Roger Kirk (Costume Design), Olivier Award-winner Peter Mumford (Lighting Design), Gavin Robins (Aerial/Circus Direction), and Frieder Weiss (Projection Design).

One of the greatest love stories of all time, King Kong - Live on Stage will feature a cast of more than 40 onstage actors, singers, dancers and puppeteers. The adventure begins in 1933 in New York City at the height of the Depression. The music in King Kong will feature several new songs by Marius de Vries, who is also writing the incidental musical score, as well as arranging the standards that will be featured in the production.

Producer Carmen Pavlovic said, "At its heart, King Kong is a love story which is why we have chosen the more intimate space of a proscenium theatre to tell this epic tale. We want to immerse the audience in the emotional journey of the book and music as much as the spectacle of our pioneering animatronics and puppetry.

The title and themes of King Kong are universal, however New York is its spiritual home and therefore it seems fitting that the story is ultimately told there. I wanted a team who could speak to an existing Broadway audience but also respond to the next generation of theatregoers. Our version of King Kong is an ode to the sweeping romance of the 1930's but it is also very much about today. I was drawn to Daniel Kramer's ability to preserve the classic story yet look at it through a contemporary cultural lens and in that regard there was an immediate meeting of the minds between us."

Director Daniel Kramer is best known for his theatre and opera work in New York and London, including 'Woyzeck' which played at St. Ann's Warehouse and 'Bluebeard's Castle' at the English National Opera.

On the announcement of King Kong - Live on Stage, Kramer said, " on Broadway will combine film, television and theatre's most exciting and classical vocabularies into one live event: projection, animatronics, puppetry and circus arts all taken to new heights and of course those timeless elements that Broadway pioneered and perfected: the 11 o'clock number, an electrifying singing and dancing Broadway chorus, a live orchestra, edge-of-your-seat story-telling, and some good old fashioned stage magic. To quote Merian C Cooper's exquisite novella, King Kong aims to be "Something never before seen."

Craig Lucas, book writer for said, "I am thrilled to be part of this project, working with a team of world-class colleagues, a producing dynamo, on a myth that speaks to man's precarious relation to the natural world, poised as we are right now between annihilation and a slim chance of salvation."

Sonny Tilders, one of the major creative forces of the high-tech world of animatronic puppetry for film and television, was one of the lead animatronic engineers for Jim Henson's Creature workshop on the "Farscape" series, followed by work on Star Wars: Episode III and The Chronicles of Narnia.

Tilders said, "With the animatronics involved in this project, we are making huge leaps from what we created for the Dinosaurs, because here King Kong is the key character who will have to command the stage and act alongside actors, when he scratches his nose, for instance, it will have to be done in one fluid, controlled motion where all the muscles up his arm will move at once and he has enough control not to accidentally punch a hole in his face!"

Global Creatures' Creature Theatre Company workshop in Melbourne working on the animatronics for King Kong