Big news coming out of NBC today, as the coveted and iconic role of Maria Von Trapp for NBC’s Live broadcast of “The Sound of Music” has been cast. Carrie Underwood, who has won her fair share of Grammys, CMA, ACM, and other lettered awards, has been cast in NBC’s ambitious project. The LIVE broadcast of the famed story will air sometime near the holidays in 2013.
When we previously announced NBC’s plans, details about the project were still being ironed out. We did know that SMASH duo Craig Zadan and Neil Meron will be behind the production. The duo is also currently producing the upcoming Academy Awards, set to air in February 2013.
Bob Greenblatt, chairman of NBC Entertainment, made the announcement early Thursday morning. “Speaking for everyone at NBC, we couldn’t be happier to have the gifted Carrie Underwood take up the mantle of the great Maria von Trapp,” said Greenblatt. “She was an iconic woman who will now be played by an iconic artist.”
Zadan and Meron are also more than pleased with the news.
“We’re thrilled to be presenting the Broadway version of ‘The Sound of Music’ live and having Carrie Underwood as the star brings it to a new generation who will fall in love with it for the first time as many millions of people already have. It’s a particular joy to us as producers to see this amazing artist stretch into new territory with this classic musical.”
This is not the first time Underwood has tackled the beloved catalog. During a CBS special in 2007, Movies Rock, Carrie performed “The Sound of Music.”
The award winning country star is currently headlining her Blown Away Tour in the United States and recently announced a second leg of the tour to kick off early 2013. The tour has been entertaining sell-out crowds in arenas all over the country and she has been setting records with album sales on her fourth album, Blown Away. Underwood’s next single, “Two Black Cadillacs,” just hit radio airplay and has already been climbing the charts.
For more, check the rest of the NBC press release below.
“The Sound of Music,” set in pre-WWII Austria, is based on the romantic true story of Maria von Trapp, an aspiring nun who leaves the abbey to become a governess for the widower Captain von Trapp’s seven children and finds herself falling in love with her employer and questioning her religious calling. It premiered on Broadway in 1959, where it broke box-office records and won the Tony Award for Best Musical. The 1965 film version won the Best Picture Oscar. Today it is an evergreen classic — as popular in opera houses and outdoor amphitheaters as it is in high school auditoriums. “The Sound of Music” features a libretto by Howard Lindsay & Russel Crouse and a score by Richard Rodgers (music) and Oscar Hammerstein II (lyrics) that includes “My Favorite Things,” “Do-Re-Mi,” “Edelweiss,” and “So Long, Farewell.”
With more than 15 million albums sold worldwide, 16 #1 singles (seven of which were co-written by
Underwood) and five Grammys, Underwood is fueled by a restless creative spirit as she released her most ambitious project yet in her current platinum-selling album “Blown Away.”
She’s won a vast array of awards, including three female vocalist awards from both the Country Music Association (CMA) and the Academy of Country Music (ACM). In 2010, when Underwood garnered her second win as ACM Entertainer of the Year, she became the first female artist in history to win the award twice. Underwood also received the ACM Triple Crown Award, thanks to her past wins for the categories of Entertainer of the Year, Top Female Vocalist and Top New Female Vocalist. Underwood also has won seven American Music Awards, six People’s Choice Awards, nine CMT Music Awards, nine American Country Awards, and is a member of the Grand Ole Opry. She earned a Golden Globe nomination for Best Original Song for “There’s a Place for Us” from “Chronicles of Narnia: Voyage of the Dawn Treader,” which she both recorded and co-wrote. She became America’s sweetheart in 2005 when she won the fourth season of “American Idol,” a vehicle that transformed her from a shy Oklahoma girl with a great voice to a budding superstar.
Underwood’s 2005 debut, “Some Hearts,” topped Billboard’s Country Albums chart for 27 weeks, has
sold over seven million copies, and was voted #1 Country Album of the Decade by Billboard. Her 2007 sophomore album, “Carnival Ride,” 2009’s “Play On,” and her current album, “Blown Away,” debuted atop the all-genre Billboard 200 chart. Over the course of four albums, she’s saturated country radio with such #1 hits as “Jesus, Take the Wheel,” “Before He Cheats,” “So Small,” “Last Name,” “Cowboy Casanova,” “Good Girl” and “Blown Away.” Underwood is currently headlining “The Blown Away Tour,” performing internationally and in arenas across the U.S. and Canada well into 2013. She was the top-selling country female touring artist of 2008 and 2010, as her headline arena tours have played over 100 shows and to over one million fans each year.
Underwood expanded her resume making her film-acting debut in the 2011 feature “Soul Surfer,” following a guest TV role on “How I Met Your Mother.” She starred in her own holiday variety TV special in 2009, and has co-hosted the CMA Awards for the past five years.
Underwood is managed by XIX Entertainment and repped by CAA.
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