'Spamalot' movie in the works

Paramount Pictures has acquired Spamalot, and the studio will be the one to mount a movie production based on the hit Broadway musical.

The project comes to Paramount from Fox, where both chairman/CEO Jim Gianopulos and Motion Pictures Group president Emma Watts were when it landed there. The film lost steam when Disney acquired Fox. The good news is the picture is fully developed, with a screenplay by Monty Python troupe member Eric Idle, with songs by Idle and John DuPrez. The director is Casey Nicholaw, who was the choreographer of the original Broadway production. He has worked on this project awhile, and in the interim has become the hottest director and choreographer on Broadway. His credits include Book of Mormon, Aladdin, Mean Girls, The Prom, The Drowsy Chaperone and Something Rotten!

Lovingly ripped off from the classic film comedy Monty Python and the Holy Grail, MONTY PYTHON’S SPAMALOT retells the legend of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table, and features a bevy of beautiful showgirls, not to mention cows, killer rabbits, and French people.

The 2005 Broadway production won three Tony Awards, including Best Musical, and was followed by two successful West End runs. The outrageous, uproarious, and gloriously entertaining story of King Arthur and the Lady of the Lake will delight audiences as they search for the Holy Grail and “always look on the bright side of life.”

The Broadway production played its final performance on January 11th, 2009 after 35 previews and 1,575 performances; it was seen by more than two million people and grossed over $175 million, recouping its initial production costs in under six months.

The show, while generally well-received by critics, has not escaped criticism. In Slate, Sam Anderson wrote, "Python was formed in reaction to exactly the kind of lazy comedy represented by Spamalot — what Michael Palin once described as the 'easy, catch-phrase reaction' the members had all been forced to pander in their previous writing jobs... Spamalot is the gaudy climax of a long, unfunny tradition of post-Python exploitation – books, action figures, video games – that treats the old material as a series of slogans to be referenced without doing any of the work that made the lines so original in the first place."

Even not all of the Python team has been on board with the musical.

In an October 2006 interview, Michael Palin said, "We’re all hugely delighted that Spamalot is doing so well. Because we’re all beneficiaries! It's a great show. It's not 'Python' as we would have written it. But then, none of us would get together and write a 'Python' stage show. Eric eventually ran out of patience and said, 'Well, I’ll do it myself then.' He sent us bits and songs and all that and we said, 'Yeah, that's all right, have a go.' But its success is so enormous that it took us all by surprise, including Eric, and now we’re just proud to be associated with it, rather pathetically."

At this time, there are no official release dates for the film.