The night before the club's opening, Kira confesses to Sonny that she is actually Terpsichore, one of the Nine Muses of Olympus. Kira encourages Sonny and Danny to open a nightclub at the auditorium called Xanadu, and the two begin working on the project as partners.
He was once romantically involved with a singer in the 1940s who resembled Kira her departure resulting in his own loss of creative passion. Sonny also meets and befriends Danny McGuire, a former big band orchestra leader turned construction mogul. The two of them fall in love, though Kira refuses to tell Sonny anything about herself. Sonny eventually traces her across town to the aforementioned auditorium, where she introduces herself as Kira. The photographer notes that the woman was not supposed to be on the cover, but suddenly appeared in a few of the shots. The cover shows the mysterious woman Sonny encountered earlier standing in front of an abandoned art deco auditorium. Having returned to his old job of painting album cover reproductions at AirFlo Records, Sonny is tasked with painting an album cover reproduction for a group called the Nine Sisters. She kisses him before skating away, leaving him confused. The sisters fly across Earth, but one of them roller skates through town and collides with Sonny. It hits a mural of nine sisters and brings them to life. He rips up one of his failed sketches and throws it into the wind.
Sonny Malone is a struggling artist in Los Angeles attempting to make a living by freelancing. The film has since become a cult classic for the way it mixes the storyline from an old-fashioned 1940s fantasy with modern aesthetics featuring late 1970s and early 1980s rock and pop music on the soundtrack as well as for fans of Newton-John. number one hit for Newton-John, and the title track (by Newton-John and Electric Light Orchestra) reached number one in the United Kingdom and several other countries around the world. Despite the lackluster performance of the film, the soundtrack album became a huge commercial success around the world, and was certified double platinum in the United States. This city appears in Kubla Khan by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, an 1816 poem that is quoted in the film.Ī box office disappointment, Xanadu earned negative critical reviews and was an inspiration for the creation of the Golden Raspberry Awards to recognize the worst films of the year. The title is a reference to the nightclub in the film, which takes its name from Xanadu, the summer capital of Kublai Khan's Yuan Dynasty in China. The film features music by Newton-John, Electric Light Orchestra, Cliff Richard, and The Tubes. It stars Olivia Newton-John, Michael Beck and Gene Kelly in his final film role. Xanadu is a 1980 American musical fantasy film written by Richard Christian Danus and Marc Reid Rubel, and directed by Robert Greenwald.