Film director Darren Aronofsky is working on a stage musical adaptation of his 2010 thriller Black Swan. Currently making the rounds for his latest work The Whale, starring Brendan Fraser, the director spoke to Variety about the project.
“We’re trying to do the Black Swan musical,” Aronofsky told Variety. “We’ll see what happens. But we’re working on it.” Natalie Portman played the leading ballerina, earning an Oscar for her performance. The prospect of Portman reprising the role for the stage remains a point of speculation. The actor has starred on Broadway once before as Anne Frank in The Diary of Anne Frank when she was a teenager.
The psychological drama follows Nina Sayers, a dedicated ballerina who has landed the lead role in a production of Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake. But as she begins her work on the role, her grip on her sanity begins to slip.
Aronofsky has long wanted to work on a musical whether on stage or screen, and also spoke about doing a movie musical someday. He said, "It's a very tricky thing because music from musicals is not popular music anymore. So what do you do?" Aronofsky cites Lin-Manuel Miranda's Hamilton as an example of threading that needle. "Figuring that angle of it, of what the music would be, where it comes from, is the big challenge," he continued. "But I've spent a lot of time thinking about it. And hopefully one day I could figure something out."
Black Swan earned five Oscar nominations including Best Motion Picture, Best Directing, Best Cinematography, and Best Film Editing, in addition to Portman's win for Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role.
