Magic Mike may have dancing hunks with abs of steel, but The Greatest Showman on Earth will have singing-and-dancing hunks with abs of steel. Zac Efron is in talks to team with Hugh Jackman in the biopic of Barnum & Bailey Circus founder P.T. Barnum that has been in the works in some form for years.
Jackman has been attached since 2009, oddly enough, the same year that Efron joined him on the Oscars stage for a number called “The Musical Is Back.” (Yes, it’s real.) There’ve been rumblings of the duo’s team-up since then, but Variety reports that the talks are officially official.
Jenny Bicks wrote the script, while Jackman and Laurence Mark will produce the musical, which sees the Wolverine star as Barnum as he creates his famous three-ring circus. Both actors have background in musicals. Jackman is a longtime performer on the Broadway stage, while Efron first came to prominence starring with Vanessa Hudgens in Disney Channel’s High School Musical movies. The young stud also featured in the Hairspray feature film as Link Larkin, but he’s all grown up with the pecs to match.
Meanwhile, off in another part of Hollywood, Colin Farrell is re-teaming with director Yorgos Lanthimos after the two worked on the sci-fi satire The Lobster. The new film is called The Killing of a Sacred Deer and, according to THR, Nicole Kidman is joining the cast. The actors will play man and wife in a story that sees their family taking in a teenager. After the kid becomes increasingly more sinister, the father-a successful surgeon-is forced to make an equally sinister decision. By the sound of the title, one might presume someone dies.
Lanthimos wrote the script with his Lobster co-writer Efthymis Filippou, and the story is said to be a psychological revenge thriller with an element of the supernatural.
