This makes me immensely happy!

LONDON - A much-anticipated musical based on "The Lord of the Rings" will have its world premiere in Toronto next year, the show's producers announced Tuesday.


The $22 million show will open in March 2006 at the Princess of Wales Theatre with a largely Canadian cast, producer Kevin Wallace said.

Wallace had hoped to open the show in London in the fall, but no theater large enough to accommodate the technically complex production was available. The musical is now slated to open in London in autumn 2006.

Published 50 years ago, J.R.R. Tolkien's mystical adventure trilogy has been discovered by a new generation through Peter Jackson's Academy Award-winning trio of films, which have grossed more than $3 billion around the world.

The three-hour stage adaptation will feature book and lyrics by Shaun McKenna ("Lautrec," "Maddie") and Matthew Warchus (Tony nominated director of "Art" and "True West"), and music by A.R. Rahman ("Bombay Dreams") and Finnish group Varttina with Christopher Nightingale.

Warchus said the show, which has a cast of 50, would combine words, music, physical theater and spectacle to create a production in which the audience is "actually plunged into the events as they happen."

"We have not attempted to pull the novel towards the standard conventions of musical theater, but rather to expand those conventions so that they will accommodate Tolkien's material," he said.