Already pencilled in as an Oscar contender with a release at the end of next year, news surrounding Tom Hooper’s follow-up to The King’s Speech with Les Misérables has just been getting better and better.

Russell Crowe and Hugh Jackman will be taking the roles of the male co-leads Jean Valjean and Inspector Javert respectively, and Anne Hathaway will be gracing the big screen adaptation in the role of Fantine, the female lead. And joining them will be Eddie Redmayne and Sacha Baron Cohen, who’s really been mixing up his career in the past few years.

We heard back at the start of the month that Hooper had decided against using 3D for the big screen production of the world-renowned novel by Victor Hugo, which of course spawned the musical that has become world-famous in itself.

We now have the very interesting news, courtesy of The Sun via Collider, that the film’s cast will be doing something beyond what is ordinarily asked of film musicals’ casts. Rather than recording their vocals in a studio, and miming the words in front of the cameras, they will instead have their vocals recorded live before the cameras, which sounds like it should definitely bring a sense of immediacy, not to mention authenticity, to the film.

“Unlike most film musicals, the cast will record their vocals live on camera rather than go into a studio first then mime on film to the pre-recorded vocal… First they have to learn the complex songs, then they’ll have to get it right on set in front of the other stars and crew.”

Hooper clearly isn’t making things easy on himself or the cast, but it sounds like a thoroughly interesting path to take with the film, and I’m loving everything that we’ve heard about the project so far. I’ve never seen a musical that’s been made like this, and can’t wait to see how it translates on screen.

Les Misérables will be released in the USon 7th December next year, and though theUK is yet to have a release date announced, I’d imagine that we’ll be getting it around the same time too. The date really does set it up to be an Oscar contender in the following year’s awards, and it’s not too far a stretch to imagine that Hooper’s production might well see a similar success to his last film.

Just to add a little context/random information, the last weekend of November and the first two weekends of December this year saw Hugo, The Muppets, The Artist, A Dangerous Method, My Week With Marilyn, Shame, Young Adult, and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy all released in the States, and pretty much all of them are being talked about as potential Oscar candidates for the Academy Awards next February. So with a little bit of luck, we’ll be saying the same thing about Les Misérables by this time next year. I can’t wait.