Christine vacates the spot left by resident diva La Carlotta (Minnie Driver), and becomes a star overnight. When he falls in love with the lovely Christine (Emmy Rossum), the Phantom devotes himself into creating a new star of the Opera. In 1870’s Paris, a disfigured musical genius known as The Phantom (Gerard Butler) haunts the catacombs beneath the Paris Opera, waging a war of terror over its occupants. The music of the night is most definitely NOT Gangnam Style…. It would take a special director, somebody with a flair for visual extravagance and an appreciation for the source, to translate this famous, fabulous story into cinematic format. It’s fair to say, though, that the time it took Hollywood to realize that nobody had yet put Lloyd Webber’s musical version onto the big screen was considerable – this version came out in 2004, nearly 20 years after the stage musical took the world by storm. Of course, most of the modern world would be more familiar with the story thanks to Andrew Lloyd Webber’s blockbusting stage musical variant, which has, since debuting in 1986, become the most successful Broadway production (and stage production generally, I’d wager) of all time. There have been many film and television versions of Gaston Leroux’s tale of the iconic Phantom of The Opera former Bond girl Jane Seymour appeared opposite Maxmillian Schell in a TV miniseries in 1983, Claude Rains played the title character in the 1943 version, Freddie Kruger actor Robert Englund stretched himself as the Phantom in 1989, and even the great Dario Argento turned it into a horror flick featuring Julian Sands and his own daughter, Asia Argento, in 1998’s Il Fantasma dell’opera – it’s not like the story hasn’t been told before. All the great songs are here, and fans of the story will be ecstatic with just how well it translates to the screen. What we think : The classic stage musical comes to brilliant life thanks to the the vision of Joel Schumacher – a very young Gerard Butler does a top job as the Phantom, Patrick Wilson equally as good as Raoul, the Other Man, and Emmy Rossum is simply luminous as the central heroine, Christine. Synopsis: A young opera ingenue finds herself torn between the mysterious tutor who has taught her to sing, and a former childhood sweetheart. Principal Cast : Emmy Rossum, Gerard Butler, Patrick Wilson, Minnie Driver, Miranda Richardson, Simon Callow, Ciaran Hinds, Kevin R McNally, Jennifer Ellison.

Phantom of the opera movie 2004 cast