Byrd, who, with Alia Jones-Harvey, has produced Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, A Streetcar Named Desire, The Trip to Bountiful and Romeo and Juliet, said he hopes the production will open in fall 2014.

"We are negotiating with a major major director for Black Orpheus," Byrd told the Huffington Post. "It’s a project that’s been dear to my heart for a long time (I’ve seen the movie over 35 times and I can’t see it enough) and it’s never been here in the States before. It’s an iconic project, a Brazilian national treasure, and this will be our first musical. It’s a great love story with great music, and we haven’t seen that with people of color on stage. It has great music; it resonates."

The 1959 film, a retelling of the Orpheus and Eurydice myth, is reset in Rio de Janiero during Carnival. Marcel Camus directed the original film, which won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film.

Byrd said he is working to bring a new audience to Broadway. "There’s an audience between Tyler Perry and August Wilson that hasn’t been addressed." He described his mission as "non-traditional, multi-racial casting on Broadway and involvement of people of color both onstage and behind stage." 

The theatre, director and cast of Black Orpheus will be named at a later date.