Based on the original novel by Gaston Leroux, which inspired Andrew Lloyd Webber's Tony award-winning musical, the TV series will take place in 1919, at the beginning of the Jazz Age in an opera house that hosts Paris' hottest nightclub. It follows a World World I pilot who suffers from burns all over his body, and as the Paris Peace Conference convenes, he is caught in a series of cryptic murders. Endemol Studios EVP Creative Affairs Jeremy Gold describes the TV series as “Rife with vibrant characters and the seductive culture of 1919 Paris, Tony’s Phantom drops us in a provocative world filled with love and loss, secrets, lies and murder."
Endemol Studios in Los Angeles, California will produce with Krantz and Jeunet as executive producers alongside Colin Calendar of Playground Entertainment. No release date has yet to be announced.
The news follows the Oct. 23 announcement that First Date writers Alan Zachary and Michael Weiner will pen a separate "Phantom of the Opera" for ABC Studios and ABC network.