'Third Man' to be Made into a Musical

The 1949 film classic, "The Third Man", is to be turned into a musical and will be seen first in Vienna, the city where the movie is set, production company VBW said.

Vereinigte Buehnen Wien said it was "proud" to announce that the premiere of the musical version of the Oscar-winning black-and-white film will take place in 2016.

"This is definitely a real coup. The rights to this cult film were hotly contested," VBW general director Thomas Drozda said in a statement.

Large parts of the thriller, starring Orson Welles and scripted by Graham Greene, were filmed in the still bomb-damaged streets of a seedy Vienna after World War II.

In 1999 a survey by the British Film Institute saw "The Third Man" chosen as the best British film of the 20th century ahead of "Brief Encounter" and "Lawrence of Arabia".

The Viennese however have always been more ambivalent about the movie, directed by Carol Reed, although the Austrian capital has a "Third Man" tour and a privately-run museum.