BREAKING NEWS: REBECCA Still Hoping to Make it to Broadway in 2013?

Well, 2013 is starting off with fresh drama as only Broadway can provide!

According to a new update from the New York Times, REBECCA's lead producer, Ben Sprecher, is hopeful that the show might make it to Broadway in the coming 2013 season. He told the Times that he believes the necessary funds to mount the show can be raised because of 'the widespread publicity and notoriety surrounding the show after the fraud scheme was revealed.'

He commented: "As a property 'Rebecca' is more valuable today than it was six months ago, through no fault of our own. It's just so much more visible now."

Sprecher is currently in the process of raising $4.5 million to bring the show to Broadway. A new contract was just negotiated that gives Sprecher and fellow producer Louise Forlenza until December 2013 to open on Broadway- otherwise the investors will have to be refunded.

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As BroadwayWord previously reported, following REBECCA's cancellation on Broadway and the news that financier and stock broker Mark C. Hotton was arrested and called 'a considerable threat' to the community, he is now awaiting trial. Hotton was arrested for defrauding the show's producers of $60,000 and for an unrelated $750,000 real estate scheme which prosecutors said featured some of the same deceptions used in the REBECCA fraud.

In October, producers filed a $100 million fraud lawsuit in state Supreme Court against Mark C. Hotton, a former stockbroker from Long Island on whom they were relying to raise $4.5 million of the show's $12-million budget. For his criminal trial, Hotton faces 20 years for each of two counts of wire fraud, if convicted.

Earlier in October, Ben Sprecher and Louise Forlenza, producers for Rebecca, the Musical, announced that they were left with no option but to postpone the show. They released a statement at that time, noting that "After Paul Abrams, a major investor, passed away in London, on August 5th, 2012, and who, with three other colleagues, represented the last portion of $4.5 million of the full capitalization for the production... On September 28th, Sprecher and Forlenza were informed that an extremely malicious e-mail, filled with lies and innuendo, had been sent directly to a new investor that morning from an anonymous third party. The e-mail was designed to scare this investor away and it succeeded. The investor withdrew."

REBECCA, the new musical based on the classic novel by Daphne Du Maurier novel, previously delayed the start of its rehearsals by two weeks due reportedly to the death of a key investor responsible for a $4.5 million investment pool in the production. REBECCA was scheduled to begin rehearsals Monday, September 10 prior to an October 30 first preview and November 18 premiere at the Broadhurst Theatre.

REBECCA had its world premiere in 2006 at Vereinigte Buhnen Wien in Vienna, where it played to sold-out houses for more than three years. Vastly successful productions of REBECCA have also played Budapest, Hungary; Bucharest, Romania; Helsinki, Finland; Stuttgart, Germany; St. Gallen, Switzerland and at the Imperial Theatre in Tokyo.

We will keep you posted...

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