Want to see Sacha Baron Cohen, Russell Crowe, Anne Hathaway, Helena Bonham Carter and Hugh Jackman sing live? I know I do. Les Miserables’ producers and director have taken the ballsy decision to get some of Hollywood’s biggest A-listers to perform without a safety net: there won’t be any autotuning after the event here.
It’s the first ever time that singing has been performed live without any post-production dubbing in a musical, and as you can see from the video below, the likes of Anne Hathaway were a little nervous at first.
Not to be weird or anything, but I’m actually a big fan of musicals. And I’ve never seen Les Mis – which is the world's longest-running musical – on stage. So I’m kind of excited after this behind-the-scenes teaser to see what the finished product looks like when it hits cinema screens in January 2013.
Hugh Jackman (who plays Jean Valjean) is basically the only main actor in the film who has any sort of experience of singing live. The guy managed to single-handedly wow the world when he hosted the Oscars and interspersed the hosting duties with song-and-dance routines, but for the others, it’s going to be way out of their comfort zone.
Plus, it’s not as if these are fringe songs that no-one’s heard of. Les Mis is responsible for some of the most well-known songs in the musical theatre repertoire. Heard of ?I Dreamed a Dream,? ?Bring Him Home,? ?One Day More? and ?On My Own”? Thought so.
Look, I know that a story about post-revolutionary France isn’t necessarily going to appeal to the broadest base of people (even though the stage version of the musical has been seen by?more than 60 million people in 42 countries), but there’s always the fact that this involves Hollywood actors and actresses doing something that they really normally don’t do to entertain people.
Enough people seem to be liking it on Facebook, so I’m guessing that they’re interested to see what happens too.
This article is sponsored by Universal Pictures.