His hideous face obscured by that iconic white mask, the Phantom of the Opera has stalked the stage before 80million theatregoers in 124 cities around the world - and spirited away more than $5billion (£3.5billion) at the box office.

Now, 22 years after Michael Crawford first played the Phantom, the show's composer, Andrew Lloyd Webber, has told The Times that “the button is pushed” on the sequel to the world's most lucrative musical.

Entitled Phantom: Love Never Dies it will receive its premiere at the end of next year and will make theatrical history if, as Lloyd Webber intends, it opens in London, Broadway and an Asian city, possibly Shanghai, at the same time. He said: “I don't think you could do this if it wasn't the sequel to Phantom ... We've been into the feasibility of rehearsing three companies at once and opening very fast in the three territories. The one which really interests me [in the Far East] would be China ... I think to open Love Never Dies in Shanghai would be an enormous thing.”

The sequel will be set a decade or so after the first instalment, during which time the Phantom has relocated from the Paris Opéra of Gaston Leroux's original novel to Coney Island in Brooklyn, then still a hugely popular beach-side amusement resort for New Yorkers. “It was the place,” said Lloyd Webber. “Even Freud went because it was so extraordinary ... people who were freaks and oddities were drawn towards it because it was a place where they could be themselves.”

The Phantom will be reunited with Christine, the “Swedish soprano”, first played by Lloyd Webber's wife at the time, Sarah Brightman. The production has yet to be cast but he said: “We are pretty clear who our Phantom is going to be - I can't say who.”

Possible candidates include Gerard Butler, who played the part in Joel Schumacher's 2004 film adaption, and Hugh Jackman, the star of Baz Luhrmann's film Australia, whose stage CV includes Sunset Boulevard, Oklahoma! and The Boy from Oz, for which he won Best Actor in a musical Tony Award. Jack O'Brien, who has had successes with The Full Monty and Hairspray, will direct the production. The sets will be designed by Bob Crowley, who has won five Tony awards and whose credits include Sir Cameron Mackintosh's Mary Poppins.

Lloyd Webber, 60, is writing the United Kingdom's 2009 Eurovision Song Contest entry. On a new BBC One programme, starting on Saturday, he is helping to choose the country's singer at the final, which takes place in Moscow in May. He has played impresario on three previous BBC series dedicated to casting starring roles in West End musicals, and in 2010 will collaborate with the BBC once again to cast Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz.

He said: “The TV casting shows increase the [theatre] audience - not just West End audience but around the country - year on year 20 per cent ... I can't be snobby about it, I think its absolutely great. And the West End audience has gone down in age.”

He added: “What everyone has got to understand about theatre is that it will never die because it is live entertainment. Whatever happens with the net, computers or television, the endgame will always be that people want to go out.”

The Stage newspaper this month voted Lloyd Webber, who in 1997 was enobled as Lord Lloyd-Webber, as the most powerful figure in British theatre of the past decade.

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