Kevin Antunes, left, and Greg Phillinganes, the musical brantrust behing "Immortal," shown in Montreal in October.
The question was a softball, but it wound up a football.
During a Q&A with media types onstage Sunday at Mandalay Bay Events Center, music director Kevin Antunes was asked about his next project after his work on the Las Vegas stop for “Michael Jackson: The Immortal World Tour” was finished.
“For me?” he asked back. “The Super Bowl halftime show.”
Well then.
A quick connecting of the dots revealed that Antunes and Jamie King, the “Immortal” director, would work together once more with Madonna. The two most recently teamed on her “Sticky & Sweet” world tour in 2008-2009. King and Antunes are widely regarded as two of the top concert-tour creative figures in the industry. Word from the NFL is that King will direct the halftime show of Super Bowl XLVI on Feb. 5 in Indianapolis, with Antunes dialing in the music.
A troupe from Cirque du Soleil also will perform in the halftime spectacle, which hit a kink in last year’s showcase when the Black Eyed Peas’ descent-in-spacesuits performance was universally derided (at least by Earthlings) even as Slash and Usher parachuted in for support. But even when the act is not great, the Super Bowl audience is: More than 162 million U.S. viewers watched last year’s show, the most-watched music broadcast of the year.
Madonna has not performed in the Super Bowl. She is expected to play a medley of her hits and reportedly will unveil a new single, “Give Me All Your Love,” a collaboration with Nicki Minaj and M.I.A., during the set. The halftime performance usually lasts 12 minutes or so, or about 30 minutes in “Space Time,” according to the Black Eyed Peas’ appearance.
On Sunday, Madonna, at the New York screening of her new romantic drama “W.E.,” was caught by an “Extra” correspondent who asked about the Super Bowl. “It's a huge deal. To be as exciting as the football game is a huge challenge. And to get your stage set up in 8 minutes, another huge challenge."
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