It's surprising that it's taken so long for a Miss Saigon movie to be made. The musical first premiered in London in 1989 and became an immediate hit, making its way to America, where it received 11 Tony nominations, three of which it won, and remains one of the longest running shows in Broadway history. Next year, the recent U.K. revival will transfer to New York with a subsequent tour planned to follow. And a film adaptation could finally arrive after that.

According to the Daily Mail, Danny Boyle is the latest director to become attached to the project, which began development back in 2009. He's only in negotiations at this point, but why wouldn't he sign on for his first real musical? He offered a hint at his musical interest with the Bollywood-style number at the end of Slumdog Millionaire, and in the past he'd been linked to a My Fair Lady remake and an attempt to do a musical David Bowie biopic. And here's a relevant excerpt from an old interview with the Playlist:

"Oh I'd love to do a musical," Boyle said enthusiastically. "A song-and-dance musical, with an original music, modern-day story, not from Broadway not with previous music. But it's very difficult. It's impossible at the moment. I think it's the Holy Grail for any film director."

More recently at the same site, Boyle was quoted from a radio interview revealing that he'd wished he'd done Millionaire as a musical but "didn't have the confidence at that time to push it through." Although he seemed to again be talking about the idea of an original musical made directly for film and not adapted from the stage, he discussed what fascinated him about the genre and how such movies poeticize the souls of characters and admitted, "I would love to still do that at one point."

Miss Saigon itself is an adaptation of the Puccini opera Madame Butterfly, setting the romance of an American soldier and local woman in the title city during the Vietnam War. It was written by Claude-Michel Schonberg and Alain Boublil (with Richard Maltby Jr.), the duo behind the Les Miserables musical, which was made into an Oscar-winning hit in 2012. A year later, Lee Daniels was reportedly set for this movie, but that possibility seems to have passed. Boyle's next movie, however, is supposed to be the Trainspotting sequel.