THE GREATEST SHOWMAN : Publicity and Promotion

[jo]

Rehearsal footage from the LIVE AD/TRAILER --

Please click on the source to see the clip.

[jo]

Meet Michael Gracey!

www.smh.com.au/entertainment/movies/how-firsttime-australian-director-michael-gracey-landed-a-hollywood-musical-20171219-h07567.html

Excerpts --

Gracey hopes The Greatest Showman will have a life like classic original musicals The Sound of Music, Singin' in the Rain and Mary Poppins.

"I'd be very surprised if The Greatest Showman didn't end up on Broadway at some point," he said. "And I wouldn't even be surprised if it ended up on Broadway with Hugh Jackman playing the role."...

Rather than a bio-pic, he sees The Greatest Showman as "a musical reverie" about a famous impressario whose creativity extended to three autobiographies that told different versions of his life.

"I kind of feel like if P. T. Barnum was around now, this would be the version of his life that he would tell and he would cast Hugh Jackman, who looks nothing like P. T. Barnum, to play him," Gracey said.

What eventually led to the greenlight for THE GREATEST SHOWMAN?

Hmmm... somehow, I seem to see WOLVERINE grinning from somewhere


JO

[jo]

A lot of photos ( from the skit and while on set) on the cast of the hilarious new show on Broadway ( literally speaking ) -- CROSSWALK The Musical!


www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-5193743/Hugh-Jackman-joins-Zac-Efron-James-Corden-medley.html

[jo]

I hate to classify this under the thread PUBLICITY AND PROMOTION because it is a true story which was not expected but turned the fortunes of the long-gestating project!

http://instagram.com/p/Bc4n-o9j7UO

Here's the Facebook link --

www.facebook.com/HughJackman/videos/1639498382778794/


We all know how Hugh had to defy doctor's orders not to sing (for the final reading intended for the top FOX execs for purposes of securing the GREENLIGHT for the project) because of his previous day skin surgery. But thankfully the restricted tape is now shared on what actually happened! My kind contact from that project told me all the details but he said that while he had a copy of the tape ( in view of the nature of his work in the project) he could not share this much-wanted video clip. He said that even the actors involved were not allowed copies ( which was limited to a very few). While his narration gave me an idea -- the actual clip did not prepare me for this emotional scene --




What a trouper! What a great showbiz story!


Jo

[jo]

That fateful day --

Pasek and Paul ‏@pasekandpaul · 9h9 hours ago

Greatest Showman reading with some of our favorites.



Keala Settle, Marcus Paul James, Carrie Manolakos and 6 others

[jo]

Remember this photo of Hugh when he seems to be on the way to the workshop ( we didn't know that then) a day after his surgical procedures/

[jo]

[jo]

We've not heard from Michelle -- great interview, including about how she loves working with Hugh ( whom she calls not just a ray of sunshine, but the SUN itself ) --

www.nzherald.co.nz/entertainment/news/article.cfm?c_id=1501119&objectid=11959526

[jo]

The Hollywood Reporter makes a comparison of the film characters versus the real-life personalities --

www.hollywoodreporter.com/lists/true-story-greatest-showman-how-accurate-are-characters-1063088/item/pt-barnum-portrayed-by-hugh-jackman-greatest-showman-real-fake-1063093?utm_source=twitter&utm_source=t.co&utm_medium=referral

[jo]

http://instagram.com/p/Bc8Z4rxDH7d

[jo]

Special feature from NEWSWEEK --

www.newsweek.com/greatest-showman-sneak-peek-upcoming-film-750028

[jo]

A great interview with Hugh Jackman...by the most venerable newspaper in the business world in London, THE FINANCIAL TIMES.

I like the views of the business-oriented writers and editors -- it is usually down-to-earth and pragmatic. They don't sensationalize and they will not be easily impressed ... and they focus on realism as a general rule.

How are they viewing the film project THE GREATEST SHOWMAN. It looks like they are anchoring it on the presence of a proven charismatic and very talented lead, Hugh Jackman! This is not a review of the movie but an interview with Hugh Jackman, just like a prospectus when an investment banker tries to sell an IPO --


www.ft.com/content/eb7c824c-e031-11e7-a0d4-0944c5f49e46

Hugh Jackman: every bit the showman

The actor talks about honing his skills for The Greatest Showman, his new musical about circus impresario PT Barnum

James Mottram


Hugh Jackman is recalling a professional low point: his days entertaining kids’ parties dressed as a clown. “I can tell you — an eight-year-old’s birthday party is the toughest audience I’ve ever had to face,” he says. One day, after a disgruntled child yelled out “This clown is crap”, Jackman produced a carton of eggs in desperation. “I just gave them the eggs and let them chuck ’em at me!” He smiles. “I really didn’t have any skills. I was very Barnum-esque.”

In some ways he still is. Jackman plays PT Barnum, the 19th-century circus impresario, in The Greatest Showman. A glitzy movie musical with original songs written by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, who won an Oscar for their work on La La Land, it’s the perfect showcase for Jackman. (Both he and the film have been nominated for Golden Globe Awards.) The genial Australian may be best known for playing the mutant superhero Wolverine in the X-Men films, but showmanship is a skill he has acquired and honed since those clowning days.

Indeed, when The Greatest Showman closes with Barnum’s words “The noblest art is that of making others happy”, it’s a quote easily attributable to Jackman. “He totally has that showman quality,” says Michael Gracey, director of the film. “There’s a real magnetic quality that he possesses.” And courage too; not many A-list stars in recent years have had the chutzpah to host the Oscars solo, as he did in 2009. “I’m not quite Barnum,” he says, “but I just thought: ‘Just do it, just have a go.’ ”

Of course there are also big differences between subject and star. Even before co-founding the world-famous Barnum & Bailey Circus, Barnum was a masterful businessman — “the Steve Jobs of his day”, says Jackman — and he understood the need for marketing. But his personal life was drenched in scandal. “He had a disaffected kid who ended up selling a story, really bad stories about infidelity,” says Jackman. “Suffice it to say, we don’t really get into that.”



Now 49, Jackman — looking trim in a pale shirt and black trousers, when we meet in London’s Claridge’s Hotel — is happily scandal-free. He’s been married to his actress wife Deborra-Lee Furness for 21 years, and together they have two adopted children, Oscar, 17, and Ava, 12. But what he does share with Barnum is a belief in “connecting with an audience and making audiences feel that it’s special, [that] it’s not just another night.”The actor as PT Barnum © Niko Tavernise

It was just after Jackman’s successful fronting of the Academy Awards that the idea was floated of a Barnum musical. After singing on stage in Oklahoma!, his one-man show Back on Broadway and his Tony-winning turn as songwriter Peter Allen in The Boy From Oz, the actor was enthused. But a box-fresh musical, not road-tested on Broadway, was anything but easy. “It’s the hardest thing to do, without a doubt, in showbiz,” Jackman admits. “There are so many elements to get right.

”When it comes to original movie musicals, the track record is hardly spotless, whether it’s Francis Ford Coppola’s costly flop One from the Heart (1982) or James L Brooks’s I’ll Do Anything (1994), which had all its musical numbers cut after negative previews. But Jackman was determined; over the eight-year development cycle, he read 37 books on Barnum and he comes to the interview armed with anecdotes about Barnum’s tough childhood, his infamous hoaxes and his uncanny mathematical skills.



With a budget of $84m and a further $100m set aside for marketing, the film, which also stars Michelle Williams, Zac Efron and rising star Zendaya, is a big risk for backers Twentieth Century Fox. Despite the studio’s cast-iron relationship with Jackman, forged through his lucrative performances as Wolverine, a character he brought to a close with this year’s splendid Logan, he’s aware that a musical with no recognition factor is a tough sell. “I’m a realist . . . it’s probably my only shot,” says Jackman. “If it works, I’ll probably get a couple more.”

Fortunately, since the success of Baz Luhrmann’s 2001 jukebox musical Moulin Rouge! the market has been more amenable to the form. “Baz broke that perception that they could actually be commercial and cool,” Jackman adds. Chicago won Best Picture at the 2003 Oscars and Les Misérables grossed $441m worldwide in 2012. That film, adapted from the Boublil and Schönberg musical, starred Jackman and won him a Golden Globe and the only Academy Award nomination of his career to date, playing the bread-stealing Jean Valjean.Zendaya in ‘The Greatest Showman’ © Niko Tavernise

At that point, The Greatest Showman was still embryonic. With Gracey and his star keen to fill it with a contemporary sound (“Barnum wouldn’t want it to feel like a museum piece,” says Jackman) the songwriting talents of musicians Bruno Mars and Pharrell Williams were sought before Pasek and Paul signed on, thanks to a little Barnum-like bending of the truth. “We had to tell a fib to the studio about how much they’d done,” says Jackman. “Michael Gracey told them they’d won a Tony — which they hadn’t.” They made up for it earlier this year, winning Best Original Score for Dear Evan Hansen.


Jackman, however, was exposed to a different kind of showmanship as a child in Sydney, where he was raised by parents who had emigrated from England in 1967. His accountant-father Christopher is a born-again Christian who was converted by American preacher Billy Graham, and used to take Jackman to Christian revivals. “I remember when I was 14, 15, going to one of those and having a very strong feeling that I was going to be up on that stage at some point. Calm but very certain.”

As prophetic as that proved, Jackman has gone far beyond that. He has spent the autumn shooting The Front Runner, a film that chronicles the rise and fall of former US Senator Gary Hart. Presum­ably a less fanciful biopic than The Greatest Showman, it’s a fascinating move for an actor who has much greater dramatic range than Hollywood often seems to appreciate (see his obsessive magician in Christopher Nolan’s The Prestige or his distraught, vengeful father in Denis Villeneuve’s Prisoners).

For the moment, his heart is set on seeing Showman hit big. “If this works, I’d love to do it on stage too,” he says, suggesting using puppetry for the circus animals. It’s an imaginative idea: perhaps a little of Barnum has rubbed off on Jackman? “He had a lot more confidence than me,” the actor says. “I have some ideas I think that are different, but for a long time I didn’t trust them as much as he trusted himself. I would love to be more like him in many ways, but I’m also happy to be me.” He pauses. “I prefer to be me.”

‘The Greatest Showman’ is out now in the US and opens in the UK on December 26

[jo]

It looks like Hugh and Michael have been toying with the idea -- of bringing the musical to Broadway!

www.broadwayworld.com/article/Could-THE-GREATEST-SHOWMAN-Head-to-Broadway-20171222


Just wait a bit -- maybe when Disney takes over FOX and the film rights to GREATEST SHOWMAN, it might even have greater chances of treading the boards!

We'll see...

If it does, the show development will likely be not as prolonged as other new stage musicals.

Musical Score - Check!
Book/Script - Check, maybe with some strengthening of the plot and characterizations
Production and Costume Design - Check, with maybe some modifications for stage performances ( to facilitate set and costume change)
Technical Requirements - no idea how it transposes to the stage
Puppetry - War Horse and Lion King made it look easy, but I am more delighted with the acting horse puppets in War Horse
Theatre - I am sure the Shubert/Nederland/Jujamcyn groups will be eager to play landlord... Or maybe even Lincoln Center ( love the size of their orchestra pit...and their ampitheatre seating).
Cast - ahem... maybe some from the movie and some from the workshops!


Jo

[hughmanity]

Triple threat indeed.  Yo-yos, catches coins, and interviews  at the same tiime.

[mamaleh]

I would think the score is far from complete. If HJ and Gracey are indeed thinking of a Broadway mounting, the score will likely have to be augmented by at least 50 percent. Presumably Pasek and Paul wrote more songs than those that ended up In the final cut, and they would probably create more to fit the adapted book for a Broadway production. They might even have “trunk songs”—already written songs that for one reason or another were not used but instead put away for future use—ready to refashion for TGS.

It takes a while to create complex puppets, too, not to mention a book that fills in the blanks. So I don’t see this happening anytime soon—maybe the 2019-2020 season at the earliest.

Just my speculation.

Ellen

[carouselkathy]

I agree Ellen. I don't remember how long it took to bring THE LION KING to Broadway, but it wasn't an easy task. Even with trunk songs, the additions would have to help the narrative along. Broadway critics are tougher than music critics, but Hugh was able to overcome their negativity in TBFO. While all of this is being worked out, maybe Hugh can do some Shakespeare or TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD.

[jo]

This was uploaded on our local ( PH) Facebook Page, although it was likely done for all other countries --

dressed for Christmas, Hugh et al answers some of the questions posed by fans --

www.facebook.com/20thcenturyfoxphilippines/videos/10159784454035582/

[jo]

Any chance he's got to plug the movie

Dec 25, 2017 20:22:16 GMT -5 jo said:

He used to play cricket!


Based on other tweets, it seems Hugh is also doing a marketing job for THE GREATEST SHOWMAN

[jo]

Comparing the two Barnums, the movie and stage Barnum --

news.sky.com/story/does-hugh-jackman-win-battle-of-barnums-11184461

Please check the links for images and video clips.

Does Hugh Jackman win battle of Barnums?

A new film about the infamous circus owner opens in cinemas on Boxing Day as a revival of Barnum the musical runs in London.
02:12, UK,
Tuesday 26 December 2017
By Katie Spencer, Entertainment Correspondent


You know how it is, you wait years for a musical about entertainment impresario PT Barnum and then two turn up at once.

A new film about the infamous circus owner opens in cinemas on Boxing Day at the same time as a major theatre revival of Barnum the musical is playing in London.

On screen, Hollywood superstar Hugh Jackman stars alongside Zac Efrom in an all-singing, all-dancing original musical called The Greatest Showman.

On stage, comedian Marcus Brigstocke is taking on the iconic ringmaster role that Michael Crawford won plaudits for back in 1981.


But in the battle to play Barnum, who comes out on top? We compare the leading men's vital statistics.


Hugh Jackman, 49, is an actor, Broadway star and film producer. He was nominated for an Oscar in 2013 for Les Miserables and has since appeared regularly in major feature films, most notably playing the long-running role of Wolverine in the X-Men film series.

Marcus Brigstocke, 44, is a stand-up comedian, writer and broadcaster. He was the BBC New Comedian of 1996 and has since appeared regularly on television and BBC Radio 4. His shows have included I've Never Seen Star Wars and The Brig Society


Marcus Brigstocke is playing PT Barnum in a London musical until March



So, why's everyone talking about Barnum again?

Jackman: He's the guy that invented showbusiness, a fascinating character. The kind of guy that when one circus ring wasn't enough, decided to make it three rings. You get to go big, it's about spectacle and showing things that had never been seen before at the time.

Brigstocke: I said to Hugh Jackman when he phoned me up, 'You do your thing with it', and he's been very supportive in leaving me space to do my thing. It's a tiny bit weird that Wolverine superstar Hugh Jackman is playing PT Barnum at the same time but The Greatest Showman - which I haven't seen yet - is telling a very different story to the one that we're telling.



Have you found joining the circus physically challenging?

Jackman: I love dancing, probably even more than singing, and for me this was a great opportunity, I was absolutely thrilled to be able to dance. Saying that, I actually wasn't always thrilled. I've got 49-year-old legs that don't want to bend as low or as often as I was made to do in this film.

Image:
Hugh Jackman stars in The Greatest Showman, which opens on Boxing Day

Brigstocke: Wolverine and I discuss this all the time, it's exhausting. It is thrilling, though, so you don't notice you're knackered until the end and then your bones turn to dust. I question whether I can pull this off every night and I genuinely have scars on my body to prove this. In the show I do a 10-metre tightrope crossing and being middle-aged, 6ft 2, slightly overweight, without good balance and with a damaged leg because I did The Jump on Channel 4, it turns out tightrope walking is really difficult.



The film sets the story to modern pop songs, the theatre show is a lot more traditional. Who's got it right?

Jackman: We wanted to take bold choices by having original music. I think we had to have modern music because that's what Barnum would have wanted. He wouldn't want that creeky 1850s 'oom pah pah' music, he would want something that could play on the radio for everybody today.

Brigstocke: Ours is more traditional, yeah. Lots of the numbers that you think of and hear when you imagine a circus. It was written by Cy Coleman in the late 1970s and is a fabulous show, amazing music and a great story. How we're doing it is really different because of where we're staging this - it's small, intimate and in a circus tent.

Image:
Marcus Brigstocke stars in the revival of Barnum the musical, which previously starred Michael Crawford in the early 1980s



Is quite a bit of artistic license required to tell PT Barnum's story?

Jackman: We used about a third of the artistic license that Barnum used about his own life! He famously wrote three editions of his autobiography and by the time he wrote the second he'd burnt every copy of the first because he didn't want anyone to realise what he'd written before. He's a flawed character but he's fascinating. He's a disrupter, as we call it today, like a Steve Jobs or Elon Musk. Art was a pretty boring stuffy affair then and he said, 'Can't we just have some fun?' He wanted to make money out of it.

Brigstocke: There's no doubt at all he became very rich by producing and promoting other people and massively overstating what he could do... but the time was the time and as well as all that he campaigned against slavery, he campaigned for suffrage; the reason his American Museum burned down was because he was campaigning against slavery. I feel very warm towards him because I feel like what he offered, although it was hokum, was a vision of something very hopeful. I think what Barnum set out to do was to delight and improve and the fact that he bought hospitals, theatres and schools makes me feel very warm towards him.



How have you dealt with Barnum's questionable record for mistreating the animals in his show?

Jackman: If we use animals they're all CGI, we didn't want to be part of something that was celebrating the use of animals in a way which rightly is not done anymore. We were very, very conscious from the beginning and we actually took quite costly and very deliberate choices to eliminate that.

Brigstocke: It's hard for people to imagine, pre-telly, pre-cinema, the idea of a circus coming to town, Barnum was the one that did that. People may have seen a pencil drawing of an elephant but it would have been unimaginable to see a parade of 20 of them with acrobats performing handstands on their heads. Of course now animal rights activists would be horrified but at the time it was incredible. We have moved on from that time. I would like to think, given how socially aware he was then, that if he was alive now he wouldn't be using animals because he wouldn't think it was necessary.


The Greatest Showman starring Hugh Jackman opens in cinemas on Boxing Day. Barnum starring Marcus Brigstocke is at the Menier Chocolate Factory, London, until 3 March.

[hughmanity]

Once again talks about doing an original broadway musical

[jo]

The Hollywood Reporter compares the film characters with the real-life persons or inspirations.

www.hollywoodreporter.com/lists/true-story-greatest-showman-how-accurate-are-characters-1063088/item/pt-barnum-portrayed-by-hugh-jackman-greatest-showman-real-fake-1063093

[jo]

Hugh Jackman has always been fascinated by P.T.Barnum and was known to have compared him to Bill Gates and other modern day entrepreneurs. It seems that this is not an empty hyperbole but is rooted in time and work management principles and practices of key CEOs of modern day business enterprises.

The article explores such visionary insights and managerial practices observed by Barnum and as observed today --

www.cnbc.com/2017/12/27/lessons-on-success-from-p-t-barnum-the-greatest-showman.html

[jo]

www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/life/features/i-love-dancing-but-i-gave-it-up-for-eight-years-to-fit-in-36442463.html

'I love dancing, but I gave it up for eight years to fit in'

Actors Hugh Jackman, Zac Efron and Zendaya tell Laura Harding why they were so eager to bring their latest film, The Greatest Showman - about circus impresario PT Barnum - to the big screen and how hard work and self-acceptance are the keys to happiness

Stellar performance: Hugh Jackman

December 29 2017


The drum beat is pulsing, a fireball blows and a silhouette appears under the rafters in red tails and a top hat. Suddenly your shoulders are moving in time to the music, a trapeze artist soars overhead and Hugh Jackman's voice sings: "Ladies and gents, this is the moment you've waited for".

So begins The Greatest Showman - in a moment of pure exhilaration that sends a shot of adrenaline right into your veins.
The new movie musical, loosely based on the life of circus impresario PT Barnum and the origins of mass entertainment, draws you in before you've even caught your breath.

Jackman devoted years to bringing it to the screen and, in playing Barnum, embodies a creature of pure theatrical bravado.
"It's not exaggerating to say that Barnum ushered in modern-day America," he says.
"Especially the idea that your talent, your imagination and your ability to work hard should be the only things that determine your success.

"He knew how to make something out of nothing, how to turn lemons into lemonade. I've always loved that quality. He followed his own path and turned any setback he had into a positive.

"So many things I aspire to in my life are embodied in this one character."

Jackman is arguably a natural successor to Barnum. Perhaps our greatest living showman, he's a staple of both cinema and musical theatre.


His co-star Zac Efron, himself no stranger to musicals, certainly thinks so.

"Everyone wants to follow his lead," he says. "He sets the tone for everyone and we just try to live up to it, because it's pretty impressive."

The young star, who plays Barnum's fictional business partner, the disinherited socialite Phillip Carlyle, is positively animated as he adds: "He's the first one in and last one out at work. He's always in a good mood.
"He's learning as he goes, but he's always open-minded, willing and cool and fun to be around. He is the greatest showman."


But it wasn't always that way for Jackman (49), who admits that embracing his love of dancing was not always easy when growing up in Australia.

"I truly love dance," he explains, "but there were eight years of my life that I didn't do it just because I wanted to fit in. Now it resonates with me and I think with most people on the planet.

"To be authentically you is the only path that can bring you true happiness. Otherwise, you're putting on a mask to make other people happy.

"As the father of two teenagers, I talk to them constantly about the idea that no matter who you are, no matter how you differ from the supermodels and football players, it's irrelevant. Love yourself exactly the way you were born."


Embracing his inner showman has come a little easier for Efron, who was catapulted to global fame at just 18 as Troy Bolton in the High School Musical films.

Other actors might have run a mile from every other musical for the rest of their careers, but Efron didn't even pause when the part came his way.

"I had no hesitation whatsoever," he stresses. "I have always wanted to be back in the musical genre, but I never knew how it would happen.

"I thought it would be on Broadway perhaps someday, but I didn't think another all-original musical would come around and that I would be suitable for it and want to be a part of it, and with Hugh Jackman.

"This is extra special for me."

Efron was already sold on signing up by the time director Michael Gracey had finished laying out his vision.

"He had this beautiful story depicted, frame by frame, and you could see the movie visually happening," he explains.
"How could you not want to be involved? It was fascinating, it was a dream come true."


Months later, as they sit together in a London hotel, it's possible he's still slightly jealous of the trapeze lessons given to his co-star Zendaya, who plays his pink-haired love interest Anne Wheeler. "I walked into her rehearsals on day one and she was already doing crazy flips and being caught by another dude," he recalls.

"I was like 'What the heck, did you just know to do this already?'"

She might have made it look easy, but the Spider-Man: Homecoming star says it was anything but.
"I knew I was going to have to be a trapeze artist," Zendaya confesses, " but I didn't know what that required necessarily.

"I remember I got a phone call from Michael before we went out to New York and he said, 'I want to use the stunt double as little as possible, so you might want to start training and working out because not only do I want to see a little bit of physical difference, but I want you to do as much as you can'."

Zendaya happily agreed to the request, but inside she was panicking.

"I don't work out ever, that's not what I do," she says. "I just have a fast metabolism, so I had to get with it right away.

"It was certainly a change, but I'm very proud of myself."


She was particularly inspired by the example set by Jackman: "He works his butt off and I think that sets the tone for the rest of the set, for the crew, for everyone that works around him.
"When you see him working hard and never complaining, being extremely nice to everyone and then also being so passionate about the project, it forces everyone else to live up to that and want to be just as good.

"Everyone was there out of passion and love and you could feel that."

Hugh Jackman's natural affinity with physical activity shows in his love and practice of sports, his muscular approach to fighting scenes in action movies, and in dancing both on stage and on film!

Yet, he is also someone in touch with his inner self, someone who spends time twice a day to meditate, who seems like an avid bookreader, and is at home talking to economists like famed UN economist/author Jeffrey Sachs and the Bangladesh Nobel Laureate Yunus. He is an advocate of a few social justice issues... He is a journalist by academic training... He seems to have a keen appreciation of fine arts and is a patron of the Museum of Modern Art...

Quite an even more complete Renaissance Man -- our Hugh!


Jo

[jo]

PETA has asked for a boycott of THE GREATEST SHOWMAN.

This article ( written by someone who says he is an animal advocate himself) disputes the PETA boycott.

www.masslive.com/opinion/index.ssf/2017/12/peta_takes_on_barnum_127_years.html

[jo]

Informative piece on the film choreographer Ashley Wallen --

www.dancemagazine.com/the-greatest-showman-ashley-wallen-2518470024.html

Excerpts --

t took nearly eight years, beginning long before La La Land showed Hollywood that there was once again an audience for original film musicals, and well before anyone had heard of Pasek and Paul. Director Michael Gracey had never made a feature film, though he was well-known in commercial circles. Wallen had been a dancer in Moulin Rouge, but his stock in trade was also commercials, along with music videos and pop-star tours. It was in 2009 that Wallen, Gracey and Jackman first worked together, on a soft-drink commercial set in a Tokyo hotel. Jackman, dancing all the way, moves through the lobby, the kitchen, a shallow rooftop pool and then back to the lobby via an obstacle course of flapping sheets wielded by maids.Elements of that tone, camerawork and choreography have echoes in The Greatest Showman, and Wallen, who's called Ash, acknowledges it. "The way we shoot those dance numbers is very much the same as what we do in commercials," he says. But he emphasizes the differences: "We've got a lot more story to tell in the film, and we've got longer to develop the characters and their journey with the dancers."

Despite the 19th-century trappings, the movie's songs and dances are unapologetically modern—"contemporary with a classic vibe to it," Wallen says. Most classic are its two lyrical duets, one on a New York tenement rooftop and the other airborne above an empty circus arena. In the first, Barnum and his wife, played by Michelle Williams, send the children off to bed and share a tender, soaring dance amid the clotheslines. In the second, Barnum's circus partner, Zac Efron, is entranced by one of the performers, a beautiful trapeze artist portrayed by Zendaya, and they end up in a dizzying aerial embrace. Throughout the movie, the camera flies and dances too, spiraling among the circus acts and the audience, hovering over the big ensembles and the intimate couples alike.

The overhead shot in the three-ring extravaganza that closes the movie, Wallen says, was "a nightmare" to shoot, "because everyone has to be so perfect, and in a perfect place. Perfect!" With floor measurements determining everyone's precise spot, as well as special accommodations for a Bearded Lady and her "massive, big dress," a Three-Legged Man lugging his extra equipment, and the Siamese Twins, two actors co-habiting a single costume, the retakes mounted up—"You see one person out, and your eye goes straight towards them," Wallen notes. "And we had confetti falling at the same time. We had so many elements to push through to get it right."


The Australian-born choreographer was awed by the work the film's stars put into getting their elements right. He says the grueling rehearsals with Williams left her sore, while Jackman's insistence on "going over and over and over" things left Wallen tired. Their duet on the roof, even after a luxurious eight weeks of rehearsal, was a difficult shoot, too. "There are big lifts, and Michelle's tall. It's beautiful, but it's actually quite athletic as well...and then we had to do the timing with the sheets," he says. The dancing sheets are among the film's many digitized effects—no animals were harmed, or even used, to film the CGI tigers and elephants. Wallen did help with the horses in the circus parade, though, and he laughs when he realizes, "I should add them to my resumé."