Love Never Dies (musical) be difficult to adapt for a stage musical. Forsyth went on to publish some of the ideas he had worked on with Lloyd Webber in 1999 as a novel entitled "The Phantom of Manhattan". Lloyd Webber returned to the project in 2006, collaborating with a number of writers and directors. However, he still did not feel the ideas he had were adaptable into a piece of musical theatre. Finally, in early 2007, Lloyd Webber approached Ben Elton (who had served as the librettist for Lloyd Webber's "The Beautiful Game") to help shape a synopsis for a sequel, based on Lloyd
The Beautiful Game (musical) to "The Phantom of the Opera", "Love Never Dies". In 1998, Lloyd Webber invited Elton to dinner to discuss the possibility of the latter working on a rewrite of the script for "Starlight Express", updating the humour of the original. Elton declined but suggested the possibility of a new musical, with an entirely original storyline, having observed that most musicals were based upon existing ideas. The two writers settled upon the idea of setting a story amid The Troubles in Belfast. The world premiere of "The Beautiful Game" opened on 26 September 2000 at the Cambridge Theatre in London and