Carrie Underwood to Play Maria von Trapp in NBC's 'Sound of Music'

9:41 AM PST 11/30/2012 by Philiana Ng

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UPDATED: "Smash's" Craig Zadan and Neil Meron will produce the three-hour telecast airing in 2013.

Jason Merritt/Getty Images

Carrie Underwood

Carrie Underwood will play Maria von Trapp in NBC's remake of the classic musical The Sound of Music that NBC will broadcast live next year.

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To shepherd the live three-hour event, which will air during next year's holiday season, NBC is reteaming with Smash producers Craig Zadan and Neil Meron (Chicago, Hairspray), who also have been tapped to produce the 85th Annual Academy Awards in February.

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“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,” said NBC Entertainment chairman Robert Greenblatt. “She was an iconic woman who will now be played by an iconic artist.”

In 2007, Underwood performed a song from the musical in a CBS special celebrating classic movies. (Watch the performance below.)

Based on the original Broadway musical that was inspired by the true story of von Trapp, The Sound of Music follows the aspiring nun who leaves the abbey to become a governess for the widower Captain von Trapp's seven children and finds herself falling in love with her boss and questioning her religious calling.

The Sound of Music premiered on Broadway in 1959 and won a Tony for best musical. Richard Rogers penned the music with Oscar Hammerstein II supplying the lyrics. Its original cast recording album spent four months atop the Billboard 200 and remained on the chart for more than five years.

The film version starring Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer won five Academy Awards including best picture and best director for Robert Wise. Its soundtrack album topped the Billboard 200 for two weeks and spent nearly 4 1/2 years on the chart.

Underwood has shown off her acting chops in a handful of roles: the 2011 feature Soul Surfer and a guest spot as a flight attendant in a 2010 episode of CBS' How I Met Your Mother.

What do you think of Underwood's casting?