Elton John Turning George Orwell's Animal Farm Into a Musical

Billy Elliot, the musical that Elton John wrote with collaborator Lee Hall, was a smash success.  So what are they doing for an encore?  Variety reports that the two are re-teaming to create a musical based on George Orwell's classic 1945 novella Animal Farm, which is an allegory about the dangers of totalitarianism.  Hall plans to have lyrics ready to show Elton by the fall, but production won't start until 2012.  The book has been turned into a stage play many times, as well as two movies, but never a musical.

Most of the characters in Animal Farm are actual animals, who overthrow their human masters and set up their own society, based on their own rules, which they call "Animalism," based on the tenet "All animals are equal."  Eventually, the self-proclaimed leaders become corrupt and more and more like the humans they once hated until the main tenet of Animalism ultimately becomes "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others."

                
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Image used with permission by Mike Marsland / WireImage

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