Disney's High School Musical 2 to Air in August

According to Multichannel News, the previously announced sequel to Disney's smash hit "High School Musical" will debut in August on the Disney Channel.

Once again starring Zac Efron as Troy, Vanessa Hudgens as Gabriella, Ashley Tisdale as Sharpay, Lucas Grabeel as Ryan, Corbin Bleu as Chad and Monique Coleman as Taylor, "High School Musical 2" will be written by Peter Barsocchini with Kenny Ortega returning to direct and choreograph.

Set during the high schoolers' summer vacation, "High School Musical 2" will involve a concert at a country club.

In addition, "High School Musical" fans will be able to determine a number of incidental details in the show, including the writing on the chalkboard and on Chad's shirt, the skateboarding trick that Troy will teach Gabriella, and the title of Ryan's summer book, among others.

"Since its extraordinary debut on the Disney Channel U.S. in January 2006, 'High School Musical,' written by Peter Barsocchini, has broken viewership records around the world and the soundtrack from Walt Disney Records was the #1 album of the year on the Billboard Top 200.  A 40-city live High School Musical concert tour ­ featuring five of the film's original cast members ­launched in San Diego in November and makes its final stop in Los Angeles on January 29.  The concert tour most recently played to a crowd of more than 15,000 at Continental Airlines Arena in East Rutherford, NJ, on Monday (1/8/07)," stated earlier press materials.

In April, play and musical licensing agency Music Theatre International (MTI) began taking requests to license a full-length, two-hour version and a 70-minute, one-act version geared toward middle schoolers. The first student production was performed at upstate New York's Stage Door Manor in August.  "I'm so excited that by the end of this 06/07 school year, more than 1,000 schools will perform the show, representing an unprecedented 5,000 performances of High School Musical, says Schumacher, "and the requests keep coming in."

In addition to local student productions, DTP has granted licenses for High School Musical to five domestic professional theatre companies:

Children's Theatre Company, Minneapolis, MN (Jan 3-Mar 11)
Theatre of the Stars, Atlanta, GA (Jan 14-Jan 28)
Pittsburgh Civic Light Opera, Pittsburgh, PA (June 5-17)
Music Theatre of Wichita, Wichita, KS (June 13-17)
North Shore Music Theatre, Beverly, MA (July 3-20)

About the future, Schumacher said, "As High School Musical fever sweeps across Europe, we're getting interest for local stage productions there, too.  For the U.S., we¹re currently working with Kenneth Feld on an exciting idea to produce a celebration of High School Musical that would include ice skating, but a different take than we've done with 'Disney on Ice' in the past.  If we can make it happen and things are moving fast, the show would be able to reach nearly every major U.S. market next season."

Visit www.disneychannel.com/highschoolmusical for more information.