The characters from the hit film ‘Mamma Mia!’ may be back in a follow-up – but without the ABBA music.

The musical ‘Mamma Mia!’, based on songs of Swedish pop group ABBA and composed by the former members Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus, has made a huge success across the world.

Some 40 million people have seen the musical and last year the film overtook Titanic to become the UK's best earning film, and has made some £280 million internationally.

However, in an interview with the Sunday Telegraph Benny Andersson said is won’t be a follow-up with ABBA music.

"No, it's not going to happen. There will not be another, quote unquote, Abba musical", he said.

Ever since the stage-to-film adaptation was released in July last year there’s been rumors about a follow-up. Hollywood star Meryl Streep has said that she’d like to return to a "Grand Mamma Mia" if it reunited the cast. Also Julie Walters, Pierce Brosnan, Colin Firth and Stellan Skarsgård stared in the movie.

Although Benny Andersson said he will not be permitting his back catalogue to be used, there’s a chance the characters from the movie might appear on the white screen again.

"Catherine Johnson [Mamma Mia screenwriter] is keen on working on something that has to do with her characters in the Mamma Mia movie – but it will not be with Abba music," Benny Andersson told the newspaper.

In the interview Benny Andersson also explained how he and his then fiancee Anni-Frid Lyngstad, also a member of the band, discussed leaving Sweden in the 1970s to avoid the country’s high taxes.

"I'm not one who complains about Swedish taxes, they're not so bad. We used to have some strange tax rules for artists. In the middle of the 70s Astrid Lindgren, who wrote all the Pippi Longstocking books, published an article describing how she paid 102 per cent tax – which was actually true, if you had your own company and paid your own social security, all that stuff.", he told the Sunday Telepgraph, adding:

"We said we we're going to be there as a band for maybe three years, and if we were going to make a lot of money, what is going to happen? We tried to figure out what we could do. But it ended up with all of us saying, no, no, we like it here, we want to stay here, and there's no reason to move somewhere else just to save some money. It's only money."

On Sunday night more than 40,000 ABBA fans turned up to Hyde Park in London to listen to the one-off gala “Thank you for the music: a celebration of the music of ABBA”, including appearances by Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus. Also celebrities such as Chaka Khan and Kylie Minogue participated.