Hugh Jackman to play The Engineer in Miss Saigon Movie?

Hugh Jackman is currently starring as Jean Valjean in the movie of Les Miserables which opened in New York on Christmas Day and is due to open in the UK on 11th January.

Producer Cameron Mackintosh has said that if the LesMis film adaptation reaches $500 million in box office receipts, he will invest in a Miss Saigon adaptation for the silver screen.

LesMis looks set to break box office records and in an interview with the New York Post Jackman has confirmed that Cameron Mackintosh has now approached him to star as the Engineer in a potential movie adaptation of Miss Saigon. Jackman said he has never seen the musical but is "all for it."

I saw the show when it opened at Drury Lane in 1989 with Jonathan Pryce (pictured) in the starring role, and it is certainly a part that Jackman could have some fun with as the Engineer is a bit of a panto villian with the show stopping number The American Dream.

A London revival of Miss Saigon is currently underway  with auditions held in Manila a month ago and a West End Theatre being sought for the end of 2013/start of 2014.

The musical has a powerful score by Claude-Michel Schönberg and Alain Boublil, with lyrics by Boublil and Richard Maltby Jr. It is based on Puccini's opera Madame Butterfly and tells the tale of a doomed romance between a Vietnamese bar girl abandoned by her American GI in 1970s Saigon during the Vietnam War.  As of December 2012 Miss Saigon is still the eleventh longest-running Broadway musical in musical theatre history