American Idol winner Carrie Underwood will play Maria Von Trapp in the NBC live broadcast of The Sound of Music.
Produced by Smash‘s Craig Zadan and Neil Meron, the 3-hour stage production will air during the 2013 holiday season, NBC announced Friday.
“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 NBC Entertainment Chairman Robert Greenblatt in a statement. “She was an iconic woman who will now be played by an iconic artist.”
Maria’s character was made famous by Julie Andrews in the 1965 film, which won 5 Academy Awards and starred Christopher Plummer in the role of Captain Von Trapp. It was an adaptation of the 1959 Broadway musical by Rodgers and Hammerstein which was based on Maria Von Trapp’s memoir, The Story of the Trapp Family Singers.
Set in Austria during the onset of World War II, the story follows an Austrian nun who becomes governess to Captain Von Trapp’s seven talented children and falls in love with the surly widower.
Underwood, who won Idol in 2005, has since earned several Grammys, American Music Awards and Country Music Awards. She performed the opening song from The Sound of Music during the Movies Rock special in 2007.
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