"The Greatest Show on Earth!" Phineas Taylor Barnum, more commonly known as P.T. Barnum, is to be the subject a new biopic being written by Moneyball writer Stan Chervin. Columbia Pictures has acquired a currently untitled pitch from Chervin that will cover the early years of Barnum, who rose from a shopkeeper to the charismatic showman who created the circus that eventually became known as Barnum & Bailey's Greatest Show on Earth. Todd Garner, who is producing Sorcerer's Apprentice, will produce this through his Broken Road Productions company. No other details about this were revealed, but I'm still intrigued.

This is a period piece I'd love to see! P.T. Barnum was born in 1810 in Bethel, Connecticut. After starting a business in his twenties, he moved to New York City in 1834 at the age of 24 and started "Barnum's Grand Scientific and Musical Theater." The museum he bought was used to promote hoaxes and human curiosities, eventually drawing some 400,000 visitors a year. Barnum entered the circus business at the age of 61, establishing "P. T. Barnum's Grand Traveling Museum, Menagerie, Caravan & Hippodrome", a traveling circus, menagerie and museum of "freaks", which by 1872 was billing itself as "The Greatest Show on Earth". Barnum was the first circus owner to move his circus by train, and the first to purchase his own train.

http://www.firstshowing.net/2009/07/13/circus-showman-pt-barnums-biopic-being-made-at-columbia/

Twentieth Century Fox has attached Hugh Jackman to play American showman P.T. Barnum in "The Greatest Showman on Earth," an original contemporary musical to be scripted by Jenny Bicks ("Sex and the City").
The film will be produced by Laurence Mark ("Dreamgirls"), Jackman and his Seed partner John Palermo. It is an outgrowth of their work together on the 81st Academy Awards, on which Jackman was host, Mark was exec producer, and Bicks was part of the Emmy-nominated writing team.

Jackman will play the showman with a penchant for hoaxing a gullible public as he creates the three-ring circus that made him famous. The musical also focuses on his infatuation with singer Jenny Lind -- the so-called Swedish Nightingale.

Pic will have a contemporary musical score, and the studio is in talks with British singer-songwriter Mika to write music and lyrics.

The musical follows the old Hollywood tradition in which tuners were scripted with specific actors in mind. The Lind role is being scripted for Anne Hathaway, who teamed with Jackman in his opening Oscars number.

Jackman, who won the Tony Award for "The Boy From Oz," is determined to make several screen musicals, and the Barnum film adds another to the properties he and Palermo are putting together at Fox.

Those efforts include a David Magee-scripted "Carousel" remake at Fox 2000. Jackman also wants Hathaway as his female lead in the Rodgers & Hammerstein classic.

http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118006842.html?categoryid=13&cs=1

Wow, competeing P.T. Barnum movies! I'm sure P.T. himself would be tickled pink and would promote these movies as the greatest shows on earth!