BILLY ELLIOT Creator Lee Hall Takes On Pink Floyd Musical

According to ContactMusic.com, Lee Hall, the creator of Billy Elliot will be teaming up with Pink Floyd's Roger Waters to create a stage adaption of The Wall.  The rock opera album, which was released in 1979, was later turned into a movie, which starred Bob Geldof and Bob Hoskins.  Waters has reportedy always been interested in turning the album into a musical.

Waters revealed to the Associated Press, "That's still very much in the cards. I have been working on and off for the last year or so with an English writer named Lee Hall, who has become greatly celebrated over here (in the U.S.) and in London, because he wrote Billy Elliot, which is one of the most successful musicals out there at the moment."

Hall's most commercially successful work is Billy Elliot, the story of a young boy in the north of England who, in the face of opposition from his family and community, aspires to be and ultimately becomes a ballet dancer. With music by Elton John and book and lyrics by Hall, the musical is enjoying a long run in the West End and opened on Broadway in 2008. It won Hall the 2009 Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical and the Drama Desk Award.

His most recent play, The Pitmen Painters, derived from a book by the art critic William Feaver, opened the refurbished Live Theatre in Newcastle upon Tyne in 2008. It tells of Ashington miners who decide to learn about art and go on to paint pictures. The production later transferred to the National Theatre in London.

Roger Waters is best known as one of the founding members, bass player, co-lead vocalist, lyricist and the primary writer for the rock band Pink Floyd. Following his departure from Pink Floyd in 1984 Waters began a solo career, releasing three studio albums The Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking (1984), Radio K.A.O.S. (1987), and 1992's Amused to Death. In 1990 Waters staged one of the largest rock concerts in history, The Wall - Live in Berlin on the vacant terrain between Potsdamer Platz and the Brandenburg Gate.

In 2005 he released Ça Ira, an opera in three acts to a French libretto based on the historical subject of the French Revolution. Waters reunited with Nick Mason, Richard Wright, and David Gilmour for what would be a final one-off performance at the 2 July 2005 Live 8 concert in London's Hyde Park, Pink Floyd's only appearance with Waters since their final performance of The Wall at Earls Court London 24 years earlier.

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