Surviving Beatles members
Paul McCartney and
Ringo Starr have pledged their name to a new theatre production for the Mirage hotel-casino in Las Vegas.
The newly conceived (and as-yet-unnamed) show will be a creative partnership between the two Beatles and Montreal's Cirque du Soleil, and is scheduled to open in 2006.
The new project is the first the Beatles have ever agreed to, described as "too good an opportunity to pass up", said Neil Aspinall, MD of the Beatles' Apple Corps label, to Associated Press.
The $100m (£55m) production will take over from the long-running Siegfried and Roy act, which closed its 13-year run last October after Roy Horn was attacked by one of his tigers.
McCartney and Starr will assist with the project, along with Olivia Harrison and Yoko Ono, but not appear in the production.
Cirque du Soleil has fast become an institution as a theatre production, with its mix of circus-themed acrobatics, music and suspense, playing to packed houses worldwide.
