The Phantom of the Opera - His Majesty's Theatre

Before anyone gets too excited over ALW's latest tweet, I think it's worth noting that ALW himself told Michael Riedel of the New York Post when lockdown started that there were "huge plans to rebrand and refresh" the Broadway production. My suspicion is the dismantling of the original was in the planning by Cameron Mackintosh (and possibly RUG) for some time; they were just waiting for the right time (i.e. wait for the powerful creatives, particularly Hal Prince, to pass away).

I understand they wheeled out Sierra Boggess last night on BBC News since neither billionaire co-producer wanted to say anything. Don't know what she said, though, but I suspect she was told what to say.

I'm not sure what kind of PR spin CM would agree to in which he is seen as the villain? It's a very, very odd decision? I think this "beef" is genuine - for Webber to come out in disagreement with CM so publically twice in a few weeks, in which ALW is on the side of the fans seems pretty... unscripted. 

Saying that, I do think ALW is trying to play the "angel" card here... his tweet is very carefully worded and actually gives no reassurances about the future of the show. 

When my bad back wakes me in the middle of the night, I switch on the World Service for a while. When I did this last night, by chance it was Sierra Boggess talking about the announcement, from Mars, I think, judging by the quality of the line. "Deeply saddened... Tragic... Two incredibly generous humans... Absolutely devastating..." You get the idea. Only one namecheck for ALW, from what I remember, but she was very gushing about CM.

Totally agree with you Steve... It's been a long long time since we've seen a CM - ALW "debate".

They've played nice in recent years celebrations for POTO and other things, but if they were such great collaborators, then CM would still be producing ALW works.  It was part of what frustrated ALW was that after POTO, financially he didn't have a hit again (maybe Aspects made its money back in London) but that almost everything after was nowhere near that - giving CM some bragging rights.  And that CM seemed to favor Les Miz over POTO probably didnt go over well either 

Or it indicates that most successful people know that they dont need to conduct business in full glare of the public. 

Publicly Mackintosh said he didn't want to produce with RUG after Phantom because he didn't want to work with another conglomerate (though that's exactly what he did for Poppins). I think he was interested in Aspects but he was too busy with Miss Saigon that year. There was some strange to-ing and fro-ing between the two then: originally Nick Hytner was supposed to direct Aspects, and Nunn Saigon. Nunn wanted to do both (I wonder why...) but Mackintosh ruled that out, which led to a falling out between the two that I don't think they ever quite recovered from.

Back in the early 2000s there was a lot of publicity about Mackintosh and ALW collaborating again to co-produce the Michael Grandage revival Evita, which is apparently Mackintosh's favourite ALW score. Then, quietly, there was an announcement in Variety in 2005 that Mackintosh was no longer attached to the project. I don't know if that's because he felt he had too much on his hands with rolling out Poppins, or whether there were other reasons...

"leaner"

edit, point made above.

Lean, less the fat. It's a black box production already.

Just curious as it is Webber's musical can he pull the rights from Macintosh? Or does Macintosh have a stake in the copyright?

I wonder why Cats despite being co-produced by Cameron Mackintosh has remained under RUG's control? The most recent productions both on tour and at the Palladium were produced by David Ian which I guess was licensed by RUG.

That's definitely not right. Cameron only has production rights in the UK, US and Australasia. It's why RUG is always the co-producer in every other territory where there is a replica production, not Mackintosh.