There were more than a few gasps of surprise when it was announced that Joel Schumacher had been chosen to direct the big screen version of Andrew Lloyd Webber's stage musical The Phantom of The Opera.

Not because he's a bad director - Batman Forever aside - but his is not exactly the first name that would spring to mind in connection with a passionate love story, such as the Phantom.

Joel explains: "Andrew asked me to do this is 1988 after he saw The Lost Boys, and we were going to make it in 1990 with Michael Crawford and Sarah Brightman but then, for a whole list of personal and professional reasons, Andrew had to abort it at that time."

"But we stayed friends and when I was doing the post-production on Veronica Guerin here in 2002, it came up again."

"I just approached it as if it were a new task and the first thing I said to Andrew was 'if you analyse the story, Christine must be very young, she must be innocent and this has to be the awakening of many things in her life'. I told him that I needed a young cast and that if there were famous young people who could do it, then great, but if there were unknowns who were better then I wanted to have the freedom to cast whoever I thought was right for the part. Andrew was fine with that, as long as they all did their own singing. That was our deal and that was how we started."

The cast he came up with for the leading roles are all relatively unknown. Emmy Rossum was 16 when she auditioned for the part of Christine, Patrick Wilson had experience on Broadway to stand him in good stead for the part of Raoul, but the coveted role of the Phantom went to Scotsman, Gerard Butler.

"I first met Gerry a couple of years ago," Joel says. "I knew he was a very interesting actor and we talked about the possibility of working together, but I never had a role for him.

"He had mentioned once that he'd been in a band and I thought he would be a great Phantom and he was very passionate about the character. I said to him 'the good news is you'd be a great Phantom, the bad news is you're going to have to sing for Andrew Lloyd Webber!' And he did. He was amazing. Gerry sang Music Of The Night and I saw Andrew jump up and race across the room and shake his hand vigorously. I knew Andrew would be polite if he didn't like him, but I could tell by the enthusiasm that Gerry had got the role."

One of the pivotal moments of the stage show is the crashing down of the huge chandelier that graces the Paris Opera House - where most of the story unfolds - at the end of the first half, but that obviously wouldn't have worked for a film that has no interval.

"It's a great first act break, but if you crash the chandelier and kill hundreds of people and burn the theatre down in the middle of the movie, I don't know what I'd do with the second half!" laughs Joel.

"When I told Andrew of the problem he suggested we move it to the end and then it made total sense for the Phantom to do that in the final act because he was destroying something he loved, his home in a sense. He's ending so much of his past life at that moment and also in that act, which would obviously maim and kill hundreds of innocent people and burn down this opera house which had been his home and his love, it shows how twisted his mind truly is, that he's gone way over the edge."

The dichotomy between stage and screen, sumptuous musical and subtle drama, could have posed a problem with the music, which is generally pre-recorded and the action fitted almost around it, but Joel and his cast didn't work that way with the Phantom.

"We were using the lyrics as dialogue, as our script actually. They further the plot and the character development and the inner workings of the character's minds and hearts so, instead of recording an album and having them sing back to it, they had total freedom to act the music. So, in other words, if Emmy started crying or Patrick wanted to whisper or Gerry wanted to shout, it was recorded at the same time and then they went back in and could record the tracks to their actual performances."

Despite his occasional unpredictability as a director, Phantom of The Opera has obviously been a labour of love for Joel Schumacher and although it might initially have appeared that he and Andrew Lloyd Webber made strange bedfellows, the end result proves that theirs has been a blissful union.

Updated: 09:35 Friday, December 10, 2004