David Bowie is co-writing a stage show based on Nicolas Roeg’s “The Man Who Fell To Earth”, a movie where Bowie played part of an alien looking for water for his dying planet.

“Lazarus” is the name of a new stage version of the movie “The man who fell to Earth” currently being co-written by David Bowie himself. With this movie Bowie will resurrect the character of Jerome Newton, a humanoid in red hair played by the thin white duke. Directed by Nicolas Roeg in 1976 the movie tells the story of an alien who came to Earth looking for water for his dying planet but who dangerously falls for alcohol and television, a movie that somehow brings us to Bowie’s dangerous existence in the US before he moved to Berlin where he would quit some bad habits with the help of the improbable angel Iggy Pop. David Bowie will not perform, however in this version which is now being prepared and which artistic director of New York Theater Workshop, James C Nicola “It’s going to be a play with characters and songs – I’m calling it music theatre, but I don’t really know what it’s going to be like.

David Bowie will be pretty much involved in composing the music for this new version of “The man who fell to Earth” which did not feature his own songs in the first version. The songs contained in “Low” the first album of Bowie’s trilogy, were supposed to be included in the soundtrack. Despite forming the perfect soundtrack for a walk around a sieged and walled Berlin, Low’s songs like “Speed of Life”. “Always crashing in the same car”, “Art Decade” or “Weeping Wall” would have added much more to the dense atmosphere of Roeg’s movie. Expectations are therefore high as regards the music to be composed for this stage version of this 1976 movie to reach the stage in Winter 2015.