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There has been a re-emergence of movie musicals in Hollywood in the past 10 years or so.
From Moulin Rouge to Chicago and now the pulitzer prize winning broadway smash hit Rent has been made into a movie.
And it's about time, if you ask me.

The most promising aspect of the movie, in my opinion, is the fact that Chris Columbus (the director) was smart enough to cast the original broadway cast of the play. Anthony Rapp, Taye Diggs, Adam Pascal, Jesse L. Martin, Wilson Jermaine Heredia and Idina Menzel are all reprising their roles from the play. There are two new players in the movie, Rosario Dawson and Tracie Thoms, playing the roles of Mimi and Joanne respectively.

Chris Columbus was not actually the first director attached to the project. Spike Lee was originally going to direct the movie. Which would have been somewhat fitting if you've seen the show. In one song, Mimi and Roger are singing together by the moonlight, and Roger says 'Maybe it's not the moon at all, I hear Spike Lee's shooting down the street'.

Jonathon Larson wrote the play but sadly, just before the show was set to debut he died from an undiagnosed aortic aneurysm, believed to have been caused by Marfan Syndrome, on January 25, 1996. It was ten days before his 36th birthday.

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