THE JOURNEY SO FAR...

So, here is the story of this journey to date:

20 years ago I wrote The Fairy Fellers Master-Stroke, a 3-act rock opera completely comprised of music from Queen. At the time, there was no precedent for this sort of thing and I was a junior in College with no contacts in the industry. I had no idea where to begin to get this made and I just buried it in my draw as another dream project.

Well, today, shows like Mamma Mia and Jersey Boys are doing extremely good BO, so I dug the material out of the draw and decided it was now or never for me to pursue this.

First thing I did was to contact Jim Beach, Queens manager/attorney who lives in Switzerland. I got ahold of him(nice guy, I'm sure) and here is where I need to back-track a moment.

Seems Queen already had the idea in 2002 to do a rock opera from their music. Before I had a heart attack, I discovered it was a completely different show. Different songs, different characters, settings, everything aside from sharing the basic concept of being comprised from Queen songs.

It's called We Will Rock You. It's been playing at the Dominion theater in London's West end for 9 years and has been very lucrative.

So I'm like, okay, since Queen has made a billion dollars off this show, perhaps they would be excited about another one. At the very least, I figured they would want to see the script, see if its any good, right?

Well, I called Jim Beach who informed me the rights to all of their music was tied up with WWRY and it would not be possible to do another show. Basically, WWRY had a non-compete clause and so it was not even worth listening to my show.

Well, i was devastated. My twenty year dream crushed with one phone call because of a legal technicality.

But, I'm not one to give up. I realized there is one company that can produce this show and it's the one that produced WWRY. For them, it would not be competing but an expansion of an already lucrative franchise. That happens to be Tribeca Productions in NYC co-produced with Phil Mcintyre Prods. over in England. Since I live in NYC, I decided to cold call Tribeca first.

I got ahold of the assistant to the person in charge of WWRY, and told her I had a rock opera I wanted to submit to them. She quickly said they don't take unsolicited submissions at which point I blurted out that this was using the music of Queen, that it was a big follow-up to their highly successful show, WWRY and I waited for the phone to click...but it didn't. She took my name and number and said the right people would get back to me.

Well, now I felt heartened that maybe something could work. I did some more research and discovered that an announcement for a sequel to WWRY was made in 2008, but after that, no word on the show at all. Not a peep for three years.

So, I suspect the sequel didn't come along well. Perhaps they didn't like the script, I don't know. But Tribeca wants to do a sequel/follow-up and I have the script for one.

Of course, I have yet to get a return call. I don't expect Robert De Niro or Jane Rosenthal from Tribeca to bother calling someone they've never heard of before back. But I have sought the services of an entertainment attorney to open full discussions with them. I can't afford him and I'm waiting for him to decide if he's going to take the case on contingency/pro buono. I really don't want to try to handle Tribeca Prods. all on my own but if the attorney doesn't take my case and I cannot raise the retainer fee, then I guess I will have to.

In the meantime, I hope to generate interest for the show with this blog. Get people talking about it, get some press releases out there and definitely get some reviews of the actual script. That might get the juices flowing and if there's public interest then maybe, just maybe, Tribeca will call me for the script instead of me calling them.

So please, once again, vote for having this show. Vote you would like to see THE FAIRY FELLERS MASTER-STROKE using the music of Queen. Thanks, guys and stay tuned here for more.

IT'S STARTED

So, I'm using this space to catalogue my journey to get a rock opera using the songs of Queen produced. It's not going to be easy. This is just one measure I'm doing but I will discuss all of them here so hopefully, you'll follow along.

First things first - what is this all about? Well, I wrote a rock opera(which they call Jukebox musicals but I can't stand that name) using 23 songs from the music of Queen. I want to produce this for the Broadway stage. I'm not a Broadway producer or anyone big in the entertainment industry and besides money, there are rights issues involved. So I'm coming here to discuss and update all of my moves. But I need your help. I'm convinced the people who can get this made will listen if I get enough eyeballs. So follow me, cast your vote that you want to see this get made.

Let's see if the impossible can be made reality.