We first heard about The Phantom of the Opera sequel back in May of 2008, and a little more was teased in December of that year, but now the production has really moved forward, and on television yesterday Andrew Lloyd Webber revealed a little more about the plot.

The stage show sequel doesn't have a film tie-in yet, but you can be assured it's only a matter of time, mind you with the sequel first being discussed some seventeen years ago it could be a rather long time yet.

Love Never Dies is the new stage show and it is set to star Ramin Karimloo as the Phantom and Sierra Boggess as Christine Daaé, the woman he is obsessed with.

When the first film, and stage show, we were far in the future and an aged Raoul de Chagny was remembering her when he saw the mark of the Phantom. The sequel seems to be leaving this ending alone and heading to a time between that final scene and the original story.

The story was conceived between Frederick Forsyth and Andrew Lloyd Webber and published by Forsyth in a novella called The Phantom of Manhattan.

The Phantom has headed off to New York's Coney Island in 1907, some ten years after the original film, at a time when it was a bustling place, an attraction to rival the great attractions of the world. His talent now means that he's running the entire fairground, and with the oddities of the site he fits in perfectly, as Webber says himself through The Daily Mail:

”...like hiding in plain sight.”

However he's still obsessed with Christine and he lures her to Coney Island to perform at Phantasma, a new attraction there, and she comes not knowing he is the man behind it all.

She's now married to Raoul de Chagny and together they have a ten year old son called Gustave, who also come with her to the island, and that's all that Webber would say on the plot, even when pressed.

”I regard this as a completely stand-alone piece. It is the love story that is the essence of the piece. I tried to develop that story as much as I can.”

Will it make it to a film? I think so. In this current climate of Hollywood they'll sequel-ise anything that's gaining the slightest of profits, so why not The Phantom of the Opera, after all it had huge success and fans would be desperate to see another.

The question is will they recast it as easily as they did the stage show version, or will they make a concerted effort to pull back the original stars, and would they want to return? Gerard Butler, Emmy Rossum and Patrick Wilson?