Kylie Mingoue in Grease 3
The Aussie diva will find a new love with a sexy co-star while John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John will be cast as her parents!
Grease is the word… again! In Hollywood’s hottest casting coup, John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John will reunite on the big screen in Grease 3-and Aussie pop princess Kylie Minogue will play their daughter.
Producers have long hounded John and Olivia to revive the multi-million-dollar success of the first Grease movie, but the star pair have resisted for the simplest of reasons - no script idea could reconcile the time that has passed since the hit flick’s 1978 release. However, an insider on Grease 3 tells Woman’s Day a storyline has been devised that both John and Olivia love, where they’ll be supporting the real star of the movie - Kylie.
“The big hitch was creating a plot that made any sense,” claims the insider. “Not only did John and Olivia play teenagers in the first movie-they played teenagers out of the 1950s And let’s face it, neither Olivia nor John is up to rigorous song and dance routines.”
“But the fans want to see Olivia and John together. So the solution was to come up with a daughter for them.”
According to the source, Kylie’s name kept popping up as producers mulled over possible leading ladies for the key role.
“The producers wanted a sexy Aussie girl to play the part, just like Olivia was in 1978. There was some talk about Holly Valance because she’s closer to the age they are looking for-but Kylie plays much younger than she really is, and it’s the tradition of Grease for the leads to be years older than the characters they are playing. It’s part of the fantasy. “Did anyone really believe John and Olivia were 17 years old in the first Grease movie?”
Kyle, 34, may be stretching credibility playing a teenager, but no more so than her “parents”. Olivia is now 54 and John is 48, and their characters are supposed to be mid-40s parents.
They wanted a sexy Aussie girl for the part just like Olivia in 1978.
The plot goes like this: It’s 25 years later and Danny and Sandy Zuko are happily mamed and living in Smalltown USA with their stage-struck daughter. She is stuck working at a local supermarket but manages to squeeze in nights out at a disco and rehearsals for the town theatre production, She wins a trip to New York courtesy of a disco contest and hoofs it off to the big, bad city to follow her dreams of stardom. Of course she leaves behind a local love who will follow her to New York and win her back from a nasty, sleazy disco owner who’s infatuated with her.
“It’s goofy fun,” says the insider, “Just like the first one. Instead of the fabulous ’50s, it’s the swinging disco era of the ’70s-Kylie will get to do what she does best.”
“She becomes the disco queen of New York and along the way daddy Danny and mama Sandy come to visit and eventually the script makes an excuse for getting all three on the dance floor.”
It’s an exciting project for Kylie and could provide a massive boost to her US popularity. Grease is one of the biggest movie money-makers ever, and is still the best-selling movie soundtrack of all time.
Although Grease 2 was made in 1982 starring Michelle Pfeiffer and Maxwell Caulfield, it was a huge flop without John and Olivia’s involvement. This time the Grease 3 team is working hard to get the right combination of talent aboard. Original Grease director Randall Kleiser has already confirmed he will return.
“I can’t wait to get going on it,” Randal says. “It’s about what has happened to all the main characters since. I think fans are really going to like it.”
As well as approaching several of the songwriters behind the Grease soundtrack the 70s setting of the sequel calls for a different spin. Producers are in discussion with Barry Gibb of Aussie music export the Bee Gees, who wrote the Grease thoo song, to come up with original yet classic sounding disco era songs, a la the band’s Saturday Night Fever days.
They are also quietly signing as many of the original as possible to make cameo appearances, among them Stockard Channing as Rizzo, Didi Conn as Frenchy and Jeff Conaway as Kenickie.
“But don’t be fooled,” the insider says, “This movie will live or die on Kylie’s performance. Either she will be embraced and loved in the part-like Olivia was in the first Grease-or she’ll go the way of Michelle Pfeiffer, who was universally hated in Grease 2. John and Olivia will get the crowds into the cinemas but it’s going to be up Kyle to keep them there.”
Story by Robert Carter
Photo caption:
HOPELESSLY DEVOTED Olivia and John made screen romance way back in 1978… and proved they still have all the moves at a party for last month’s DVD re-release of Grease.