Margo Lion Developing Musicals of 'Monsoon Wedding' and 'Like Water for Chocolate'

Talking to Bloomberg News' Jeremy Gerard last week, HAIRSPRAY producer Margo Lion says she's at work "doing what makes her happiest" and that's developing new material.

"'I'm working with Mira Nair on a musical version of ‘Monsoon Wedding,'" she said, referring to that movie's director. Also in the development stage is an adaptation of another popular film, 'Like Water for Chocolate.'

'I'm excited about both of them, but I really don't know what is going to happen,' she said. That's partly the nature of producing, to which one can add a strong dose of economic reality.'"

Click here for the full interview.

'Like Water for Chocolate' is a 1992 film based on the popular novel, published in 1989 by first-time Mexican novelist Laura Esquivel. It earned all 11 Ariel awards of the Mexican Academy of Motion Pictures, including the Ariel Award for Best Picture, and became the highest grossing foreign film ever released in the United States at the time.

'Monsoon Wedding' is a 2001 film directed by Mira Nair and written by Sabrina Dhawan, which depicts romantic entanglements during a traditional Punjabi wedding in Delhi. Writer Sabrina Dhawan wrote the first draft of the screenplay in a week while she was at Columbia University's MFA film program. Monsoon Wedding earned over $20 million at the box office.

Although it is set entirely in New Delhi, the film was an international co-production between companies in India, the United States, Italy, France and Germany.