Underwood to play Maria in Sound of Music

Underwood to play Maria in Sound of Music

Carrie Underwood will star in a new television version of The Sound of Music.

The 29-year-old Grammy-winner has landed the role of Maria von Trapp in a forthcoming US broadcast based on the 1959 Broadway musical.

Julie Andrews most famously took on the role in an Oscar-winning movie adaptation released in 1965.

The television version will be a three-hour event.

It is scheduled for broadcast on NBC sometime during the holidays in 2013.

The network announced Carrie's casting on Friday.

'Speaking for everyone at NBC, we couldn't be happier to have the gifted Carrie Underwood take up the mantle of the great Maria von Trapp,' Robert Greenblatt, chairman of NBC Entertainment, said today. 'She was an iconic woman who will now be played by an iconic artist,' he added.

The Sound of Music is based on The Story of the Trapp Family Singers, a memoir by the real-life Maria von Trapp. She was the stepmother and matriarch of the Trapp Family Singers.

The tale was adapted for a 1956 German film which then inspired Broadway's The Sound of Music.

The 1959 stage production featured music and lyrics penned by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II.

Their songs My Favorite Things, Climb Ev''ry Mountain, Do-Re-Mi and the title song The Sound of Music became enduring musical favourites after Julie Andrews was cast in the big screen adaptation.