First look at Hugh Jackman as P.T. Barnum in The Greatest Showman

Last Updated on July 31, 2021

Now that Hugh Jackman has hung up his Wolverine claws for the final time, he's free to enter the world of P.T. Barnum for THE GREATEST SHOWMAN. Jackman will be playing the "godfather of the modern circus" in the musical film, but development on the project has taken quite some time. "Up until La La Land, everyone was saying there hasn’t been an original musical in 23 years," Jackman said while speaking with Entertainment Weekly recently. Jackman added that "the prevailing thought in Hollywood was, unless you have a brand people know, it’s not a done thing. So it just took a long time." EW has also revealed a handful of new photos from the film featuring Hugh Jackman, Zac Efron, Michelle Williams and Zendaya.

THE GREATEST SHOWMAN will track P.T. Barnum's rise from "poverty-stricken childhood to the launch of his first circus in New York." Michelle Williams plays Barnum's wife, Charity, with Zac Efron playing Barnum's business partner who falls in love with a trapeze artist played by Zendaya. "This was also a time in America where puritans kind of ruled and the circus was the equivalent of some dark-alley-strip-show kind of thing," said Jackman.

THE GREATEST SHOWMAN is set for a December 29, 2017 release.