Excerpt from Genre Magazine

December 4, 2004

The Phantom Unmasked

...The plan was to shoot the film in 1990, with Crawford and his popular stage co-star Sarah Brightman (Lloyd-Webber's wife at the time), recalls Schumacher.  But after Brightman and Lloyd-Webber amicably split, "the rights to everything got tied up in the divorce, so it all got put on hold."

Schumacher and Lloyd-Webber continued to revisit the project throughout the years, with John Travolta, Antonio Banderas and Hugh Jackman all mentioned as possible candidates to wear the mask.  With those rumors swirling, a group of Crawford fans banded together in 1998 to form The Michael Crawford Phantom Movie Campaign (MCPMC) and its website, phantommovie.com.  "We grew quickly and got a lot of press," says Jane Woodside, one of the groups founding members.  MCPMC held fundraisers, took out 11 ads in Variety and got close to 10,000 signatures in it's online guestbook.  But their efforts proved ultimately fruitless.

Robert Viagas, a program director at Playbill magazine, saw Crawford perform Phantom three times, and understands MCPMC members' outrage over his not getting the movie role.  "These are people for whom Crawford was practically a religion," says Viagas.  "They were so devoted to his interpretation because Crawford really got to the soul of the character."

Indeed Woodside says, "I've seen ten other actors as the Phantom, but Crawford's performance is so spectacular; the other actors acted the role, Crawford became."...