Sir Nicholas Hytner, Artistic Director at The National Theatre, has hinted that the theatre version of War Horse will earn more than the movie version.
The National Theatre's artistic director, Sir Nicholas Hytner, has told Sky News his stage adaptation of War Horse will make more money than Steven Spielberg's movie.
The play based on Michael Morpurgo's novel has won a host of awards and generated millions of pounds for the theatre.
Meanwhile, the Hollywood version is already being talked about as an Oscar-winner.
But Sir Nicholas has revealed that even though the theatre does not own the movie rights, they still have a stake in the film.
He said: 'We bought the stage rights for a novel for which the screen rights had already been sold. We're not movie producers so we wouldn't look for the movie rights. But we do have a stake in the movie because Dreamworks gave us a good deal on material that is specific to the play.'
The theatre version of War Horse will play at venues across the globe. The play made its world premiere at the National Theatre in 2007. In two runs, before transferring to the West End, it was seen by more than 2,000 people.
By November 2011 more than one million had seen the play in London. It is currently taking bookings until February 2013.
Its success has helped to generate huge profits for the National Theatre and despite arts funding cuts the NT will have £2.3m in reserve funds.
Figures for the 2010/2011 financial year show the theatre made £70.6m and 48% of that came from box office revenue.
Sir Nicholas Hytner said, 'We took a ballsy decision to invest our own money in the West End transfer of War Horse. Nobody else has an interest in it. We're producing it ourselves. That's worth a fortune to us, £3m a year,' Sir Nicholas said.
The extra revenue has been much needed. Like other theatres, The National had its Arts Council funding cut.
But the money generated by War Horse has allowed the NT to continue staging more experimental work that is less commercially viable.
Sir Nicholas added: 'The £3m we earn every year is the £3m we lost in the spending cuts. War Horse will now go all over the world. I'll stick my neck out and predict the play will be more profitable to us than the movie will be to Dreamworks.'
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