Last month, The Mark Gordon Company announced it would finance the feature film version of Broadway’s Come From Away, a Tony nominee for Best Musical in 2017. As the story moves from stage to screen, much of its original theatrical team will follow; writers David Hein and Irene Sankoff will pen the screenplay, and Tony-winning director Christopher Ashley will helm the movie.

Though Ashley is currently working on the Broadway-bound Escape to Margaritaville and the mounting of a Canadian production of Come From Away, his wheels are spinning his vision for the film.

“The plan is to shoot, certainly the exteriors, maybe the whole movie in Gander and Gambo and the town in Newfoundland where this all happened,” Ashley divulged to Playbill in a phone interview, “and, actually making this movie in the place itself surrounded by the people who are the characters in the film.“

Prior to its arrival on Broadway, Come From Away played a couple of performances at a hockey rink in Gander—and the energy of that experience is part of the influence on Ashley’s aspirations.

“The energy in that room, watching 2,500 people per performance lose their minds as they’re being told a story about them—I hope that the movie has some of that same deeply joyous emotional experience to tell a real story about people…shooting it where they are and surrounding them.”