The marquee at the Cambridge Theatre

The Beautiful Game was inspired by a documentary about a Belfast football team in 1969. With an original story by Ben Elton, the show opened at the Cambridge Theatre in London on September 26, 2000, and closed there on September 1, 2001. It was awarded the Best Musical Award in the Critics' Circle Theatre Awards for 2000, becoming the first Andrew Lloyd Webber show to win this award. The show was performed in repertory for several years at the Opera House in Dresden, Germany, where it was officially premiered on January 24, 2003. It opened at the Mad�ch Theatre in Budapest in May of 2005. There has been talk of a movie version, but I've yet to see anything concrete about that.