When Lloyd Webber saw the film in the early 1970s, he was inspired to write what he pictured as the title song for a theatrical adaptation, fragments of which he instead incorporated into "Gumshoe". In 1976, after a conversation with Hal Prince, who had the theatrical rights to "Sunset", Lloyd Webber wrote "an idea for the moment when Norma Desmond returns to Paramount Studios"; Lloyd Webber did no further work on the play until after 1989's "Aspects of Love". At that point, Lloyd Webber "felt it was the subject had to compose next", though by February 1990 he had announced plans to turn Really Useful Group private so he could "make movies rather than musicals."