What’s going on with movie musicals?

Pat­ti LuPone doesn’t like movie musi­cals. On a 2017 episode of Andy Cohen’s talk show Watch What Hap­pens Live, the leg­endary actress was asked about the 2012 film adap­ta­tion of Les Mis­érables – hav­ing orig­i­nat­ed the role of Fan­tine in the West End, she knew a thing or two about the show. There’s a brief pause to call Madon­na ​“dead behind the eyes” in Evi­ta before she says, ​“I don’t know why peo­ple assume they can do musi­cals or make movie musi­cals with­out ever hav­ing been involved with the process of mak­ing a musical.” 

Movie musi­cals of the 21st cen­tu­ry are a shad­ow of their for­mer selves. In these risk-averse times, the focus is on adap­ta­tions from the stage with bank­able stars at the helm – think Chica­go, Into The Woods and Mam­ma Mia. But since 2020, even that’s been slimmed down. Musi­cals aren’t even mar­ket­ed as musi­cals, lest any­one feel tricked into watch­ing one. The movie musi­cal is in dire need of resuscitation. 

From 2010 until 2019, movie musi­cals had occa­sion­al crit­i­cal and com­mer­cial suc­cess. Stu­dios stuck to bank­able options from the­atre: Les Mis­érables made $435m at the box office, earn­ing enor­mous acclaim (though not from Pat­ti LuPone) and the Best Actress Oscar for Anne Hath­away. Damien Chazelle’s La La Land, an out­lier to the genre in that it’s not based on any pre-exist­ing IP, may large­ly be remem­bered for its infa­mous Oscars gaff but it made $433m at the Box Office and remains just one of three films to gain 14 nom­i­na­tions at the Oscars, win­ning six. Rob Marshall’s Into The Woods tried to repli­cate the suc­cess of Les Mis­érables, return­ing $212m for Sondheim’s dark fairy­tale fable, but Michael Gracey’s The Great­est Show­man blew box office expec­ta­tions wide open with a $428m return, con­tin­u­ing to impress itself on musi­cal cul­ture with a Broad­way adap­ta­tion cur­rent­ly in the works. One of the rare times when a musi­cal film becomes fod­der for musi­cal theatre. 

Direc­tors stacked their casts with tal­ent from both the world of film and the­atre. Anna Kendrick was paired with Broad­way roy­al­ty Jere­my Jor­dan for The Last Five Years, while Les Mis­érables puts Rus­sell Crowe, Hugh Jack­man and Anne Hath­away next to Aaron Tveit and Saman­tha Barks. One could argue the rea­son Into The Woods failed to land as well as its pre­de­ces­sors was its lack of stage tal­ent inte­grat­ed with screen actors, despite Bernadette Peters, Imel­da Staunton, and Amy Adams all hav­ing appeared in ver­sions onstage. 

The for­mu­la was sim­ple: bank­able names and well-known the­atri­cal mate­r­i­al that will trav­el well. And then, in 2019 – Cat-astro­phe. 

It had all the mak­ings of a smash. Oscar-win­ner Tom Hoop­er (Les Mis­érables) was back in the director’s chair. There was a large, star­ry cast: Idris Elba, Jen­nifer Hud­son, Dame Judi Dench, Sir Ian McK­ellen and not­ed cat lady Tay­lor Swift. Sequins and fur were out: motion cap­ture was in. Ignor­ing the sta­ple cos­tum­ing of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Mar­mite musi­cal, Hoop­er once again inte­grat­ed stage per­form­ers into the cast, cast­ing Zizi Strallen, and two prin­ci­pal dancers at the Roy­al Bal­let, Francesca Hay­ward and Steven McRae.

But sit­ting at 19% on Rot­ten Toma­toes and with end­less jokes about it – even from its own stars – Cats turned into a cat­a­stro­phe. Crit­ics tore it apart. Audi­ences either hate-watched or didn’t watch at all. Part of the blame fell to Tom Hoop­er – and not just because of the accu­sa­tions by VFX teams of his behav­iour dur­ing post-pro­duc­tion (#ReleaseThe­But­t­hole­Cut). Cats is already a divi­sive musi­cal, but the film adap­ta­tion was a mess. The deci­sion to turn beloved actors into motion-cap­tured cats that looked like sleep-paral­y­sis demons cer­tain­ly didn’t help. Odd cast­ing choic­es, unfin­ished VFX, bad reviews, bad recep­tion, fail­ure to make its big bud­get back – Cats changed the game. With such a wild fail­ure on their hands, exec­u­tives got cold feet. Musi­cals were box office poison.

And then, in 2021: a change. Across the­atres and stream­ing in the UK and US, six­teen movie musi­cals were released. Some bombed hard, some mid­dled. But from out of the pack, kick­ing and shout­ing, two entered the ring to bat­tle as awards sea­son kicked off. 

Steven Spielberg’s remake of 1961’s West Side Sto­ry and Lin-Manuel Miranda’s adap­ta­tion of Jonathan Larson’s Tick, Tick…Boom! show­cased the real spec­trum of mod­ern musi­cal the­atre. The for­mer was the bal­let­ic Sond­heim epic, the lat­ter Jonathan Larson’s pre­lude to the Pulitzer Prize-win­ning Rent. Two very dif­fer­ent musi­cals, two very dif­fer­ent adap­ta­tions. But each cap­i­tal­ized on the two things the movie musi­cal needs to sur­vive: tal­ent and spectacle. 

Adding lit­tle plot-wise to his remake, Spiel­berg relied on the­atri­cal tal­ent to bring this trag­ic tale to life. Cast­ing the then-unknown Rachel Zegler as Maria, as well as Broad­way per­form­ers Ari­ana DeBose (Hamil­ton) as Ani­ta and Mike Faist (Newsies, Dear Evan Hansen) as Riff, sud­den­ly gave Broad­way fans a rea­son to buy a tick­et. I dare you to watch Faist danc­ing cir­cles around Ansel Elgo­rt in ​‘Cool’ or Ari­ana DeBose lead­ing the charge in the famous ​‘Amer­i­ca’ dance break and not feel goose­bumps. They’re as elec­tri­fy­ing on screen as they are onstage. 

Even behind the cam­era, the right tal­ent can trans­form the recep­tion of a movie musi­cal. Tick, Tick…Boom! showed that with the right peo­ple behind the cam­era, even actors with no musi­cal expe­ri­ence (ie. Andrew Garfield) can give a career-defin­ing per­for­mance. Nobody under­stands musi­cal the­atre like Lin-Manuel Miran­da and it was his deep famil­iar­i­ty with the genre that gave the film its edge. Musi­cal num­bers are earned and gor­geous to watch, effort­less­ly inte­grat­ed into the over­ar­ch­ing plot while pro­vid­ing the show­man­ship we crave.

There was, of course, one minor prob­lem. For all their tal­ent, their spec­ta­cle – nei­ther film could be con­sid­ered a com­mer­cial suc­cess. West Side Sto­ry made just $74m glob­al­ly on a bud­get of $100m. Tick, Tick…Boom! grossed just $115,585 on its lim­it­ed the­atri­cal run before Net­flix released it world­wide. Yet, their Rot­ten Toma­toes scores are 92% and 87% respec­tive­ly. Crit­ics like it, but it doesn’t trans­late to tick­et sales. Is it a lack of star pow­er? Lim­it­ed time in the­atres? Or just a gen­er­al indif­fer­ence to the genre as a whole, as proved by oth­er 2021 flops In The Heights and Dear Evan Hansen? 

So it’s no won­der stu­dios are turn­ing to trick­ery. Won­ka mar­ket­ed itself as a whim­si­cal, fun-for-the-whole-fam­i­ly movie, not a musi­cal. It did incred­i­bly well, show­ing at cin­e­mas across the world for months after its ini­tial release, mak­ing $629m on a $125m bud­get and earn­ing gen­er­al crit­i­cal praise. Despite a crit­i­cal past­ing, Mean Girls made over $100m on a $36m bud­get, using an Olivia Rodri­go song for its trail­er over one of its many musi­cal num­bers. The num­bers don’t lie. But I believe there is a way for the movie musi­cal to retain its soul AND make their pro­duc­tion bud­gets back.

For the risk-averse, adapt­ing Broad­way musi­cals will con­tin­ue to be the way for­ward. Pre-exist­ing IP will get peo­ple into cin­e­mas con­sid­er­ing it’s vast­ly cheap­er than a the­atre tick­et. But with the right peo­ple hired to make these adap­ta­tions, the goal of achiev­ing crit­i­cal acclaim and com­mer­cial suc­cess could become far more bal­anced than it is now. 

The tal­ent aspect is sim­ple: hire peo­ple in front of and behind the cam­era who under­stand musi­cals. Lis­ten to Han­nah Wadding­ham when she tells you to hire the­atri­cal tal­ent because ​“they won’t let you down”. Fun­da­men­tal­ly, they know how to get the best out of the genre and that trans­lates on-screen. Hopes are high for Jon M Chu’s upcom­ing two-part adap­ta­tion of Wicked, which remains one of the most suc­cess­ful Broad­way shows of all time (hav­ing made over $1bn since it opened in 2003). Leads Cyn­thia Eri­vo (Elpha­ba) and Jonathan Bai­ley (Fiyero) are Tony and Olivi­er-award win­ners respec­tive­ly, but also well-known faces on screen. 

They’ve also been paired with megas­tar Ari­ana Grande and bonafide movie stars like Jeff Gold­blum and Michelle Yeoh – sure­ly, the safest com­bi­na­tion one could cre­ate for a movie of this size and scale. Even direc­tor Jon M Chu is no stranger to the genre, hav­ing direct­ed 2021’s In The Heights on top of count­less music videos. When you have direc­tors, actors, writ­ers, cin­e­matog­ra­phers and chore­o­g­ra­phers who under­stand the com­plex syn­tax of the musi­cal, the end prod­uct becomes so much stronger. It’s a del­i­cate bal­anc­ing act, but get­ting peo­ple who love the genre usu­al­ly makes the films better.

Spec­ta­cle is hard­er to quan­ti­fy. Why do we watch movie musi­cals? We want to see things that are impos­si­ble with­in the bound­aries of a the­atre space. Think of Gene Kel­ly danc­ing in the rain, of Dol­ly Levi and the whole of Yonkers putting on their Sun­day clothes, or the Grease car fly­ing up into space. The musi­cal has always pushed the bound­aries of what a cam­era could cap­ture and we need that pio­neer­ing ener­gy back. La La Land proved that even the every­day can be spec­tac­u­lar, whether that’s cars jammed on a free­way or Ryan Gosling walk­ing down a pier. Bring back the spec­ta­cle and you bring back the rea­son for the movie musical’s exis­tence. Wicked’s mag­i­cal world can be expand­ed infi­nite­ly on a film in a way it can’t in the the­atre – it might be the best rea­son for adapt­ing it for film. One can only hope that the unim­pressed reac­tion to their ini­tial trailer in Feb­ru­ary encour­aged them to get back into the edit­ing suite before Part One’s release in Novem­ber. But for this autumn’s oth­er musi­cal offer­ing, a grit­ti­er visu­al feast awaits. 

As we approach the inter­na­tion­al release of Jok­er: Folie à Deux, the cre­atives behind the film have done every­thing they can to not call it a musi­cal (despite pre­vi­ous­ly say­ing it was). A Vari­ety cov­er sto­ry, an awk­ward­ly phrased answer at a press con­fer­ence, and an insis­tence at every turn before its Venice pre­mière that this film is NOT a musical. 

Yes, Jok­er: Folie à Deux is a world away from In The Heights or Mary Pop­pins, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a musi­cal. Some­one mean­er than me might even call it a juke­box musi­cal, which opens up a whole dif­fer­ent can of worms. You might ask why Todd Phillips and co are so afraid to call it what it is. Do they con­sid­er the ​‘musi­cal’ to be a less­er genre that may pre­vent them from win­ning Oscars? Or, as I strong­ly sus­pect, did mar­ket­ing inter­vene and say ​‘For the love of Gene Kel­ly, stop call­ing it a musi­cal or peo­ple won’t see it!’.

I could say they don’t know what a musi­cal is, but they’re smart peo­ple. Lady Gaga’s in it, of course she knows what a musi­cal is! But it’s now seen as the kiss of death to use the dread­ed M‑word. Audi­ences don’t like musi­cals, we’re told. But, the money’s been spent, the film’s been edit­ed – let’s mar­ket it dif­fer­ent­ly and hope no one notices all the singing and danc­ing. And by the time they dis­cov­er the truth, the movie’s already got your mon­ey, so what can you do? Ear­ly reviews of Jok­er: Folie à Deux from Venice have been mixed. The Inde­pen­dent called it ​‘edgy and dis­turb­ing’, the BBC ​‘an under­whelm­ing, unnec­es­sary slog’. Han­nah Strong’s review for Lit­tle White Lies called it ​“a film of half-mea­sures, lack­ing ambi­tion in a way that is at least mild­ly more enter­tain­ing than its pre­de­ces­sor”, though puts that pos­i­tive down to the inclu­sion of music from half a cen­tu­ry ago. Of course, the moviego­ing pub­lic will have to wait until Octo­ber 4th to judge for them­selves, but arguably the ban on the word ​‘musi­cal’ has had the oppo­site effect. 

Suc­cess­es in the last decade have proved that, with enough con­fi­dence in the genre, the movie musi­cal can thrive crit­i­cal­ly and com­mer­cial­ly. There is an audi­ence out there for these movies and with the right peo­ple behind them, they will sell tick­ets. Wicked and, to a cer­tain extent, Jok­er: Folie à Deux, are going to be an enor­mous test and I’m pray­ing that the cre­atives and audi­ences come through. If they don’t, it could be Bye, Bye Birdie for the whole genre.