Joel Schumacher Talks On 'Phantom Of The Opera'

Joel Schumacher spoke with Sci Fi Wire about his upcoming movie of Andrew Lloyd Webber's Phantom of the Opera

Schumacher says that he credits his crew with creating the film's rich look. "My job is to hire people far more talented than I am and give them a direction ... If I say, 'For the masquerade ball, let's do it all black and white and gold and silver, and then we'll put [star] Emmy [Rossum] in pink and the Phantom in red,' that's an idea. But what they do with it is all them. That's just a concept."

Schumacher said that he wanted to make sure that the characters and story were as believable as possible in the context of the film's opulent universe.

"This is a young, tragic love story, and it has to have great sets and great music and great costumes and all of the sword fights and horses and carriages, but that's potatoes," Schumacher said. "I said to Andrew, 'I'll do the movie if Christine can be very young,' because if you do the research, the ballet girls are very young. But also I wanted her to be innocent so that her relationship with Patrick Wilson would be the awakening of romantic love for the first time, and the relationship with Gerard Butler's character, the Phantom, is [a] more dark, obsessional, awakening of sexual, destructive love. The good kind."