Stephen Daldry vocal about 'Hours'

Thursday, April 24th 2008, 4:00 AM

Director Stephen Daldry is bringing his cinema-to-stage musical adaptation of "Billy Elliot" to Broadway this fall. But next he wants to bring his hit 2002 film "The Hours" - which won a Best Actress Oscar for Nicole Kidman - to an even grander stage.

"We thought about it as an opera," he told The News' Joe Dziemianowicz.

Really?

"Seriously," he said. "Scott Rudin, the producer, is very keen on it becoming an opera. I'm serious about it."

Daldry, a resident of the Meatpacking District, achieved international fame with his film version of Michael Cunnigham's novel about Virginia Woolf. And he directed both the film and overseas stage versions of "Billy Elliot."

Yet he says: "I'm not really a movie director. I've just done a couple of movies. I've always thought of myself as a theater director who's moonlighted a couple times. I much prefer theater; it's much more my home ground."

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