Recently, there has been a surge of musical movies, including many that are based off of actual broadway musicals, the most recent being “Wicked,” “Mean Girls” and “Wonka.” Many theater lovers have been anxiously waiting for these musicals to come to the big screen. With this surge of movies came their trailers; however, one major detail missing in all of them is the musical aspect. The norms of musical theater include dancing and singing. From the trailers, viewers could not even tell if it had these aspects
“Mean Girls” is a classic story about a girl named Cady Heron who goes to a public high school after moving to the United States. She becomes friends with fellow students, Janis and Damian, who persuade Cady to become friends with the plastics, a group of popular bullies containing Regina George, Gretchen Wieners and Karen Smith, to get an inside look on what being a popular girl is like. “Mean Girls” was originally a movie in 2004, but has recently been adapted into a Broadway musical. In January, the movie version of the musical was released, but many were disappointed to see that it was a musical because it had not been marketed as one.
A similar situation occurred with the new “Wonka” movie, a prequel to the beloved tale of Willy Wonka before the events of the classic 1971 “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.” As the trailers showed no sign of the film being a musical, audiences expected it to be a typical family-friendly movie, shocking many when the characters began to sing and dance. The original film was a musical, but people watching this movie had no idea it would follow the style of the original.
“Wicked” was orginally a book published in 1995, and it served as a prequel for “The Wizard of Oz.” The novel, written by Gregory Maguire, follows the story of the Wicked Witch of the West, Elphaba, and the Good Witch, Glinda, before Dorothy came to Oz.In 2003, it was adapted into a Broadway musical and has been on Broadway for over twenty years now. During the Superbowl, the “Wicked” movie trailer was shown. Though many know that “Wicked” is a Broadway musical, in the trailer there was no sign of any musical theater elements; we do have a little bit of a sign at the end of the trailer when actress Cynthia Erivo, who plays Elphaba in the film, sings the infamous note from the iconic song “Defying Gravity,” but that is the only indication.
From posts on social media, it can be found that audiences usually hate musicals, pushing studios to market these recent movie musicals as your typical movie to get people to come to theaters and watch them.
Since COVID-19, people have not been as interested in going to theaters due to the rise of new streaming platforms. Movies that are marketed as musicals will most likely not get people to go to the cinema unless they are really interested in a new musical film or if they know a lot about the musical already. Though movie musicals are no closer to gaining popularity, this new style of marketing may just convert some viewers to the Broadway fandom.
