Christian Bale Congratulates That Person

Despite now being an Oscar winner and the star of one of the most successful superhero trilogies of all time, Christian Bale must be resigned to the fact that he will always be reminded about Newsies, the Disney movie musical that failed miserably at the box office in 1992 but found new life as a cult-hit on home video.  Bale starred as Jack Kelly, the leader of a group of New York city newsboys who went on strike over an unfair newspaper price hike in 1899.  It's also the movie that had Bale singing with a painfully fake NY accent while clomping around on a pretend horse.

However, a stage version of Newsies opened on Broadway this year and has become a huge hit.  The show won two Tony Awards last month, and has been playing to sold-out houses all summer.  So inevitably, Bale was asked about Newsies on Broadway while promoting The Dark Knight Rises in this week's issue of Entertainment Weekly (which is also celebrating it's 987th Batman cover this year...at least it seems that way):

One of your past movies is now a hit Broadway musical: Newsies.  Have you seen it?

No, I havent.

Are you surprised that this early flop in your career has had the cultural life that it's had?

Of course! Yes! These things never have any sense.  I'm incredibly happy for them.  They're having the success that our movie never had.

Do you have any interest in seeing it? 

I'm not really into musicals.  But I wish them the best.  And I'm sure the person playing the character I played exceeded whatever I did, and congratulations to them.

As a Newsies fan myself - I saw the movie in theaters twice in 1992 (both times, my friends and I were the only people in the theater), and I'm seeing the Broadway version for the second time next week - I've always thought that Christian Bale has been an awfully good sport when it came to this movie and its almost fanatical adoring fanbase.  Musicals clearly aren't his thing, especially this particular musical, and he's certainly under no obligation to see the show.  Honestly, it's doing fine whether he shows up or not.  I just thought it was nice to see him congratulate the cast.

I did get a laugh out of him not knowing the name of the person playing Jack Kelly on stage.  That would be Jeremy Jordan, who received a Tony nomination for Newsies, and will be appearing on the next season of Smash on NBC.  According to the liner notes of the Newsies cast album, he was such a big fan of the original film that he'd been wanting to play Jack since he was nine years old.

But does he exceed Bale in the role?  I'll let you decide:

 Here's the new stage version:

I tend to prefer the new Broadway edition, but in fairness, the show underwent some major re-writes to fix some issues that movie had.  For instance, Jack is now an artist instead of an aspiring cowboy, so Jeremy Jordan is spared the indignity of pretending to ride a horse in his version of "Santa Fe".

Now hopefully we can get the cast of Newsies to congratulate 'that guy' after whatever blockbuster success The Dark Knight Rises has at the box office this weekend.