Comedy writer Paul Howard revealed he has had to stop publicly comparing Copper Face Jacks: The Musical to The Moulin Rouge after he was threatened by the Parisian cabaret with a legal letter.
However, the mastermind behind the hit show, which stars Dancing With The Stars finalist Johnny Ward, added that he still dreams to make movie magic out of the hit stage show.
The creator of legendary cult character Ross O’Carroll Kelly told the Irish Daily Mirror: “I would love that like. I think it would be a great movie.
"But it is very tongue-in-cheek - it would have to be a very tongue in-cheek movie where it was aware that it was a comedy.
“You couldn’t play this, like Moulin Rouge is played safe. You couldn’t play Copper Face Jacks straight because it is kind of a pastiche of a musical really.”
Previously dubbing Coppers: The Musical ‘Moulin Rouge with slowsets’, the 48-year-old funnyman revealed how he found himself in hot water with officials in Paris for associating the two shows.
Laughing off the matter as ‘the nicest legal letter he has ever recieved’ he said: “We got in trouble with The Moulin Rouge in Paris, I started saying in publicity that Coppers was Moulin Rouge with slowsets and carvery.
“And we got this solicitors letter from the Moulin Rouge in Paris, it’s the nicest solicitors letter i’ve ever got in my life, and I’ve got a lot of solicitors letters especially when we did Anglo the musical.
“But this wasn’t threatening this was just so beautifully written and well meaning.
“But it literally said, ‘We heard you on RTE talking about the show, it sounds like a really exciting project and people seem to really be getting into it and wish you all the best of it, and suddenly, however, there was this sort of cut and paste, boilerplate cease and desist thing saying ‘stop calling it Moulin Rouge’.
The author joked: “So I started calling it Westside Story with slowsets.”
COPPER FACE JACKS: THE MUSICAL will return to the Olympia Theatre from 10 July until 10 August 2019
