Modern Movie Musicals

 Hi there

above: "The Colour Purple".  Picture taken from Neon  streaming platform.  No mention of It being a musical.

It truly annoys me when movie-makers love to disguise that their movies are musicals.  I guess they must think that if actors were seen singing and dancing throughout the trailers, then audiences would run screaming away from their upcoming movie.  

Take "Wicked", for instance:  the stage musical has been a success all around the world.  For years.  It's beloved (actually, not beloved that much by me, but I appreciate other people's opinions). The song "Defying Gravity" is a show-stopper. Theatre audiences are enthralled when the young witch astride her broomstick soars above their heads.  Wow...

"Wicked" is being turned into a movie.  The first trailer is out...

But we don't see any singing.  The only song we hear is dubbed over an action sequence.

It's one more movie that doesn't reveal it's musical heart in the trailer.

There are other modern movie-makers who have used this same tactic, they will try all sorts of ways not to show singing and dancing in a trailer:

Wonka

The Colour Purple

Mean Girls

Anything to pretend these movies are not musicals.  It's as if those faceless Hollywood guys are ashamed of their product.  Or they think that the audiences will be.

So, what do they get instead?:  a grumpy audience who think they're going to see see a normal movie, ie, one  without songs. 

Musical fans, too, are irate because they realise they've missed a musical that had been right under their noses at their local cinema complex.

When a musical show on the stage is advertised,  it will usually have the words " - a musical" written alongside the title, eg

The Colour Purple - the musical

Mean Girls - the musical

Wicked - the musical

Legally Blonde - the musical

Hairspray - the musical

etc...etc...etc...

But what about "Lala Land"?  It was  a tremendous success and trumpeted as a musical.  Okay, so "Lala Land was a straight-to-movie musical that had never been anywhere near a stage.  But didnt this success show that there was an opening for the movie musical to be out and proud?

No, those movie-makers still want to disguise musicals in their trailers.  No wonder "The Colour Purple" musical and "Mean Girls" musical only lasted in cinemas a week or two.  The wrong audience had been notified via the trailers. Imagine the horror to fans who thought they had booked for an unvarnished remake of a much-loved movie only to get to the theatre and find it had been turned into a - gasp! - musical.  Here, in Aotearoa-New Zealand and most other countries, audiences don't know that "Mean Girls" and "The Colour Purple" have been West End and Broadway stage musicals for some time... 

...  Why on earth does Hollywood buy a successful stage musical and not want to tell the world it's true nature?  Search me....

*In NZ, the word is spelt "colour".  In USA, it's "color"