As someone who actually worked with Michael... it's not true, never was. With that little peccadillo out of the way, yes, I think Michael actually would have been a great choice for the Phantom. However, he wanted to do a film as well, and way too early in the show's lifetime, so ALW said no.
Michael wound up trying to develop his own
Phantom/Faustian storyline for a jukebox musical of his own compositions, working title of
M1: The Phantom, but it never came into play. (I still have the outline somewhere - the book is way better quality-wise than Webber's libretto, although the score leans quite heavily on
Invincible, which wasn't one of Michael's more successful albums.)
"There is no problem so big that it cannot be run away from."
~ Charles M. Schulz
Updated On: 7/4/11 at 08:50 AM