Antonio Banderas & Stephen Schwartz Are Working On New Musical About Picasso

While the new version of Godspell, produced by the Teatro El Soho in Malaga, is being put together, Antonio Banderas and Stephen Schwartz are already working on another collaboration - a new musical, according to the website of American playwright and theater director Gordon Greenberg.

The pair are working on Picasso the Musical, a show about the life of the painter from Malaga. Also involved in the production are Trafalgar Entertainment, which has a theater in London's West End, as well as the composer and playwright Caridad Svich.

The news was made public following a photo on Antonio Banderas' Instagram account in which the actor and director, Schwartz, Greenberg and Svich could be seen together in Malaga, along with Andy Señor Jr, who was on the creative team for Next to Normal in Barcelona.

No details have yet been announced about upcoming production dates, but it's expected the show will debut in Spain before productions in the West End and North America.

Banderas began his acting career with a series of films by director Pedro Almodóvar in the 1980s and then appeared in several Hollywood films, such as Philadelphia (1993), Interview with the Vampire (1994), Desperado (1995), Assassins (1995), Evita, (1996), and The Mask of Zorro (1998). He also appeared in the Spy Kids series and provided the voice of Puss in Boots in the Shrek franchise as well as its spin-off film Puss in Boots.

In 2003, Banderas made his theatre debut as Guido Contini in Nine, for which he was nominated for a Tony Award and won a Drama Desk Award. In 2018, he starred as Pablo Picasso in the second season of Genius, for which he garnered critical praise. For the 2019 film Pain and Glory, he received the Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actor and a nomination for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor - Motion Picture Drama.