Need another reason to rejoice that NBC is doing a live musical this holiday season? How about the fact that this year Christopher Walken will star as Captain Hook in their production of Peter Pan? F*** yeah!
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“I started my career in musicals,” Walken said in a statement. “And it’s wonderful after all this time, at this point in my career, to be in this classic musical I watched as a child and to work with Neil Meron and Craig Zadan again after Hairspray. It’s a chance to put on my tap shoes again.”
It’s been a long time since Hairspray and Walken’s days on the stage, but he seems to have NBC’s full confidence. Before that, Walken showed off his fabulous dance moves (and flying skills) in Fatboy Slim’s “Weapon of Choice” music video, from 2001.
As for the rest of the cast, the jury is still out. NBC’s Entertainment Chairman Bob Greenblatt did confirm that the network will, indeed, carry on the tradition of having a woman play Peter Pan. He even stated that the network had originally courted Kristen Bell for the part, but scheduling conflicts took her out of the running.
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“We were talking about doing it with a man at one point, but we’ve had several women who wanted to do it and they’re either busy or their schedules don’t work,” Greenblatt shared. “It’s not like we can film this at any time; I need this person from Aug. 5 to Dec. 5, so that knocks out the Kristen Bells of the world, who was somebody I talked to about doing it and she was interested but she’s doing House of Lies. It’s tricky finding the right person in the schedule that we need it, but we’re actually close. [Peter is] going to be female.”
As much as we’d love to see Bell fly around as Peter, we’re sure that even without the House of Lies conflict, hubby Dax Shepard would have major issues with his lovely lady flying around on thin cords while carrying their second child. Plus, there are plenty of nearly-as-talented and lithe blondes who would be an acceptable choice in the role. And as long as we get Mae Whitman as Tink, we really don’t care what else happens.
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