Cast and Crew of Hot New Teen Musical “In Your Dreams” Salutes “American Idol” on Successful Conclusion of Fifth Winning Season

New York, NY (PRWEB) May 27, 2006 –-

The cast and crew of the hot new teen musical “In Your Dreams,” which is taking on Disney Channel’s “High School Musical” for its share of the lucrative $170 billion teen entertainment market, issued a statement today congratulating “American Idol” and its creators Simon Fuller and Simon Cowell on the conclusion of a fifth successful season.

"As Bill Carter details in his new book, ‘Desperate Networks,’ ‘American Idol" is not a saga of brilliant showbiz vision,” says Zeke Farrow, the Miramax-linked producer of the hot new teen musical. “Every U.S. network passed on 'American Idol' before Fox came along, and even Fox was skeptical. Fox only picked up the show after Rupert Murdoch, at the behest of his daughter Elisabeth Murdoch, instructed the network to close the deal.”

And yet despite network resistance, the show went on to become America's biggest hit, notes Farrow. "Although David Ellender, chief executive officer of Bertelsmann AG-owned FremantleMedia Enterprises, whose FremantleMedia North America produces the program (with 19 Entertainment), declines to discuss how much money the 'American Idol' brand generates, within the industry it is no secret," says Farrow. "With advertising, license fees, merchandising and recording revenues taken together, the figure exceeds $1 billion a year."

And that’s true even though Fremantle doesn't have the talent-contest market to itself, says Farrow: Competitor "Operacion Triunfo" has enjoyed popularity in Spain and Latin America, while the memorably titled "The Mongolian Cow Sour Yogurt Supergirl Contest," sponsored by the Mongolian Cow Dairy, was a Chinese hit.

Perhaps not surprisingly, Farrow finds it hard not to make a comparison between the ground-breaking $1 billion in gross revenue that major-network-reject “American Idol” has generated with the potential revenue for his own production, the hot new teen musical, “In Your Dreams.” http://myspace.com/inyourdreamsthemusical

“Maybe it's corny, but U.S. television sensation 'High School Musical,' the 'West Side Story'-meets-'Grease' tween flick, has become a US phenomenon since its premiere in January and is now a multi-billion dollar empire for its creator Disney Channel,” says Farrow. “And that’s the same market that my own musical is targeting."

Adds Farrow: “As Rich Ross, president of Disney Channel Worldwide, told reporters in Sydney just last week, ‘The tween market is worth tens of billions of dollars in the US. Kids have a seemingly endless appetite for this -- that's what is making it a worldwide phenomenon.’ And that is the same potential shared by ‘In Your Dreams.’"

In a year where major entertainment channel launches have been announced from InnerTube to MSN to My Network TV – and not to mention webisode contenders by numerous animation outsiders – Farrow is confident his musical can find a home with a major, “big-buck” producer.

Nevertheless, he says, progress has been slower than originally anticipated. “My sources in Hollywood tell me that many of the studio executives that compete with the Disney Channel feel that ‘High School Musical’ is a total fluke that cannot be duplicated, and these executives feel that it is wiser to leave this multi-billion dollar international market to their competitors while they develop other more special projects.”

According to Farrow, these might well be the same individuals who told Walt Disney that animating a duck and a mouse would never work. “The duck and the mouse have each generated a billion dollars by now – and the ‘High School Musical’ franchise seems set on that very same trajectory.”

And not all in Hollywood are naysayers, Farrow notes. “We have a meeting scheduled for June with DualStar Entertainment, which is the management vehicle for teen stars Ashley Olsen and Mary Kate Olsen, and also for the Sprouse twins,” says Farrow. “The Olsen Twins, who are also promoting a new health show for kids called Sportee Kids, would be great for either a live feature or an animated film. What people forget is that the Olsen Twins actually have a number of music CDs that have gone multi-platinum and the most powerful distribution channel in the world -- it's called Wal-Mart. So we are awaiting this meeting with much anticipation and confidence. Something always seems to pop up out of nowhere.”

Farrow adds that Sarah Jessica Parker’s Pretty Matches production company, which has a two-year exclusive production agreement with HBO, is still a contender for production rights. “Sarah Jessica was a child star herself, in the fashion of Haylie Duff and Hilary Duff, and she still has the joy of childhood within her. She is a leading light in the New York entertainment community, and she is still out there for us.”

Unlike “American Idol,” which is a hugely successful televised talent competition just finishing its fifth season that is on its way to generating $1 billion in related revenue, “In Your Dreams” is a large-scale, splashy, teen musical –- with just a dash of political satire. It centers around Helen, a seventeen-year-old girl who appears in three different incarnations: Black, Pink, and Blue. It opens with the bizarre introduction of Black Helen, a girl tortured by fellow students Melanie and Jordanna and secretly in love with Jared. We quickly learn that Black Helen is but a dream and as she fades and Pink Helen wakes up, we realize that Pink Helen’s life is a perfect, bubble gum musical. She is popular, she’s dating Jared, she has high hopes for a perfect day. And today is the day to beat all days. It is prom, and Helen is a front runner to win prom queen…until she learns that the “Popular Girls Caucus” has turned against her, and is even stuffing the ballot box to engineer her defeat!

What is helping to fuel the “In Your Dreams Express,” according to Farrow, are its 13 ingeniously lyrical songs, performed by a number of top Broadway singers, including “Trailer Park’s” Drama Desk-nominated Leslie Kritzer, “Wicked’s” Laura Bell Bundy, “Les Miserable’s” Jodie Langel, “Little Shop of Horror’s” Kerry Butler, “Thoroughly Modern Millie’s” Gavin Creel, “Hairspray’s” Jackie Hoffman, “The Full Monty’s” Sloan Just, and Anika Larsen, Danny Rocket and Anthony Rapp from “Rent.” Rhythm and blues artist Shayna Steele is also a contributor.

The stage version of “In Your Dreams” will see a showcase production at Ars Nova, the famed Manhattan performance incubator, later this summer, says Farrow. http://broadwayworld.com/viewcolumn.cfm?colid=9263

Among those in the motion picture industry with a growing awareness of the significant market value that a theater-distributed rival to Disney’s cable-based “High School Musical” has to offer are Rick Hess, John Ptak, Micah Green, Brian Kavanaugh-Jones, Kevin Iwashina, Emanuel Nunez, Roeg Sutherland, Bart Walker, Bill Pohlad, Art Linson, George Furla, Rob Cowan, Avi Lerner, Rick Sands, Harry SLoan, Perry Stahman, Clark Woods, Robbie Little, Gina Cabanas, Matthew Fisher, TinRes, Anacruz Celulose, Nu Image/Millennium, ThinkFilm, Roadside Attractions, Antony Mitchell, Phoenix Pictures, Ryan Kavanaugh of Gun Hill Road; Thomas Tull and Scott Mednick of Legendary Pictures; Oliver Obst; Melrose Investors; Steve Bing; Paul Federbush: Jeff Skoll; Tom Jacobson; Nathan Lane; Philip Anshutz; Marc Platt; Daniel Battsek; Gus Gustawes and Kevin Morris;Penny Marshall; and Vanessa Taylor at Pretty Matches Productions, which is currently producing “The Washingtonienne,” an HBO sit-com about an ambitious Senatorial intern who discovers previously untapped product placement opportunities right in her own workplace -- "The Apprentice," but horizontal.

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