The Poster Memorabilia blog

A Phantom of a Movie for a Popular Musical

A decade of carpets, four amused stars, and a 2004 adaptation nobody talks about.

By an anonymous Hollywood insider

Did you know that The Phantom of the Opera musical had a movie adaptation in 2004? I think most people either forgot about it or never knew it existed. It arrived while Hollywood was busy rediscovering the movie musical after Moulin Rouge and Chicago, but somehow it never stuck in the public memory the way those did, or the way Dreamgirls and Hairspray would a couple of years later.

It also didn't help that it featured a cast that you never would've expected to ever star in a movie musical. Gerard Butler? Emmy Rossum? Patrick Wilson? Minnie Driver? These are undoubtedly big names that could get butts in seats, but for a movie musical?

I do have to commend some of them for giving it a good fight. Emmy Rossum and Patrick Wilson are actually great singers, and their rendition of “All I Ask of You” is my favorite in the soundtrack. Everyone else, though—I’ll just say we should be grateful they never did another movie musical again.

All of this may sound like I'm dogging on the movie, but I actually really liked it. Questionable casting aside, it's still very entertaining. I also really love that gothic Victorian setting, which they translated well from the theater production to the movie. It has all the dark vibes of early 2000s vampire flicks.

“It has all the dark vibes of early 2000s vampire flicks.”

I even liked it enough to get the cast to sign the movie poster. I started hounding for autographs around 2010, and I spent most of that decade chasing after celebrities. The Phantom of the Opera movie always stood out to me, so I made it one of the first movie posters I worked on.

Fortunately, many of its lead stars went on to become popular actors. Gerard Butler hit it big literally two years later with 300, becoming one of the era’s most in-demand action stars. I eventually met him at the LA premiere of one of his later action films, Olympus Has Fallen, and surprised him with the poster. He laughed as he signed it, which told me he knew it wasn't his best work.

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A year later, I met his leading lady, Emmy Rossum, at the Critics' Choice Awards. Shameless had already hit it big then, so the actress was constantly appearing at awards shows. That was the first time I saw her in person, and she was so beautiful. I always thought she and Wilson were the only two actors perfectly cast in the film.

Speaking of Patrick Wilson and awards shows, I met him at the Golden Globes in 2016, the year he was up for Fargo. He looked so surprised that I brought a Phantom of the Opera poster for him to sign, since he was already famous for The Conjuring at that point. But he signed it anyway.

As for Minnie Driver, I saw her at the 2016 Emmys, and she looked amazing. She also laughed the hardest when she saw my poster because even she knew she was miscast. I think she was the only one who got an actual singer to dub her singing in the movie.

Eventually, I also met the great Andrew Lloyd Webber and the rest of the cast throughout the decade, but those four always stood out to me. They're still very popular to this day, but I think I'm one of the very few who know that they starred in this largely forgotten movie adaptation of an iconic musical.

Some things you watch. This one you keep.

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