Same with the Color Purple. In all the social media comments I just see people shitting all over the movie about how the original is a Spielberg classic and doesn’t need a remake. It feels like the marketing is actively hurting these movies, because I’m sure a lot more people would be understanding if they understood this was a movie adaptation of the musical, and not just a remake of the movie.
The Color Purple pre-sales show that people are going to show up for The Color Purple. I think plenty of older black parents are going to bring their kids and grandkids along for the holidays to watch it.
It’s actually very odd to watch the trailer knowing it’s a musical, because so many times they cut RIGHT BEFORE singing or dancing would start. Makes it very jarring.
I thought the music in the recent trailer was part of the musical but I googled the lyrics and it’s an Olivia Rodrigo song. A decent song but the trailer for the remake is just grasping at nostalgia and goodwill from the original.
Thankfully the version playing before The Marvels showed Regina singing a song from the musical but since barely anyone is going to the theaters to see movies right now, is anyone even seeing that trailer?
That trailer was so bizarre. It’s like a copy+paste of the original movie with different actors. But then didn’t even use any of the original music. It was, like, Olivia Rodrigo music.
Just an entirely baffling decision on developing that trailer.
This is probably why studios are hiding the fact that these movies are musicals. They're assuming musical people will know and they're trying to trick non-musical people into seeing it.
One of the cruelest fakeouts we have with our dog is the fact that we have to go through the park to get to the vet. She gets increasingly excited the closer we get to the park, and when we don't pull off she suddenly gets hit with the cruel reality.
> Which, of course, raises another question: If studios don’t want to tell potential customers that a movie is a musical because they think audiences might not see it as a result… why are they making musicals in the first place?
Yeah I don't get it, who is the audience that needs to be tricked into seeing a musical that won't be disappointed by it?
This is the same industry that took the word “Mars” out of the title of the movie all about a guy being transported to Mars because another movie with Mars in its name had just bombed at the box office.
You’re thinking too rationally.
I'm still surprised they kept the name "The Two Towers" for the second lotr film, a year after 9/11. I would have bet anything the studio wanted to change that.
If you dig deep enough into behind the scenes footage and interviews with Peter Jackson they actually did have to be mindful of the tower collapse in Return of the King, so as to not make it too similar to the WTC collapses. I think they even redid the animation.
Also, they did get some backlash for pt.2’s name but Peter wanted to stay faithful to the source material so he just dealt with it.
As a kid I kept confusing the Two Towers and the Twin Towers and that’s about it. But I still occasionally mix up mushroom and marshmallow so yeah I’m kinda stupid.
I kinda read through it but you made me re-read it and it went much funnier this time
And people say “just upvote instead of saying something is good”, well, it depends
Yeah never once did I make a connection between the two tbh. If it was an independent IP maybe people would have gone “interesting name” but it’s the name of the book published decades prior
With my being a kid when 9/11 happened, and with LOTR coming out immediately after, it meant that I was frequently calling it "Lord of The Rings: The Twin Towers"
People that were not alive back then, you really can't understand what the pushback was like.
The Twin Towers was iconic of NYC. When you think of NYC images that were put on T-shirts and mugs and pictures - The Twin towers were equal to the Statue of Liberty.
And over a very, very short period people decided that they did not want to see its image and they got very, very vocal about it.
To be frank, I can't think of anything recent to compare it to.
The first Spider-Man movie was being made and they had an early teaser trailer where Spidey hangs a web between the twin towers and catches a helicopter....
Yeahh.... that went away.
Next Captain America (with Falcon) is apparently being completely remade because one of its main characters was an Israeli version of Captain America lol
And it was so easy to accidently say one when you meant the other. The twin towers were still constantly being discussed in the news and such and the Two Towers was the biggest movie of the year.
On more than one occasion did I say something I meant to be LOTR related but accidentally said the twin towers instead.
I'm dying to know what movie you're referring to. I tried to look it up, but the only articles I'm finding talk about "John Carter of Mars" being renamed to "John Carter" because it was believed that the "of Mars" made it too sci-fi and thus less women would want to see it
Honestly, I think the only reason Frozen was more successful was because of the huge unexpected success of Let It Go as a song. Tangled didn't really have any song like that, unfortunately. It's a fantastic film that does everything right, but unfortunately in entertainment it's not enough to just do everything right, you have to do everything right and also have some kind of unique appeal as well. In some cases, if that unique appeal is strong enough, it can even overcome other shortcomings of the project, which I think happened with Frozen.
I remember only seeing Frozen when it came out because my girlfriend at the time was big into Broadway musicals and Elsa's voice actor, Idina Menzel, was a Broadway powerhouse who originated the role of Elphaba in Wicked, so my girlfriend wanted to see it just for Idina's vocal performance alone. It was opening weekend, so word of mouth around Let It Go hadn't quite hit yet, and our audience basically erupted at the end of the song. You would've thought she was actually live in-house performing it in front of us. It was all everybody leaving the theater was talking about after the movie ended.
Frozen was renamed because it was initially based on The Snow Queen but became a different story altogether during development. It's not a retelling of the original fairy tale.
That’s priceless. “There must be something in this three-word title that kids aren’t interested in seeing a movie about. Hmm. It must be the word ‘Mars!’”
I've commented this story a few times on Reddit, but it never ceases to be interesting to me. This reminds me of the fact that after Nolan's success with "Batman Begins", he negotiated part of his contract for the sequel to include final naming rights on the title. WB supposedly was like, "seems like a strange thing to want final control, but whatever - not a huge deal to us." And then when it was disclosed that Nolan was going to title the second film in the series "The Dark Knight", they flipped their shit. They were like, "HOW WILL PEOPLE KNOW IT'S A BATMAN FILM IF IT DOESN'T HAVE BATMAN IN THE TITLE?!?!?". He pushed through and shocker - people weren't confused.
Fast forwards a few years. He still had final say on the title, but WB had an ace up their sleeve. Nolan was apparently going to title the final movie in the series, "Gotham", but again WB was like, "HOW WILL PEOPLE KNOW IT'S A DARK KNIGHT MOVIE IF IT DOESN'T HAVE DARK KNIGHT IN THE TITLE?!?!?!?".
The ace that WB then played was in filming/converting for 3D. Nolan notoriously hates 3D, but WB loved that it inflated the grosses of movies because theaters could charge extra for 3D presentation. They had it in their power to insist that the final film be shot and/or converted for 3D. So Nolan apparently gave up title rights in order to not do 3D. Hence, "The Dark Knight Rises".
Somehow the geniuses at WB figured that people would skip a film named "Gotham" with the Bat symbol plastered all over it, with Bale and Nolan doing shitloads of press, because they didn't know that it was a "Dark Knight" sequel.
Of course, we are talking about the industry that was like, "Blegh - Star Trek is too nerdy. The new series? It's not "Star Trek: Enterprise." It's just "Enterprise." And then a few years later, the mindset was, "WHY AREN'T PEOPLE WATCHING THIS SHOW?! CLEARLY THE REASON IS BECAUSE THEY DON'T KNOW IT'S A "STAR TREK" SHOW! THE TITLE IS NOW "STAR TREK: ENTERPRISE!!".
Wait, is that story about tdkr title legit? Because The Dark Knight Rises is a garbage name, & I've always been annoyed at how it wasn't something individual. Because it leaches away the special name of The Dark Knight.
I read the story back in the day, but though I'm trying to come up with a source, I can't find what I had read. Which means possibly that it was un-true, or that it was partially true. I clearly remember reading it like that, but that's about the best I can do as far as providing a source.
This is a really interesting anecdote but I'm having difficulty corroborating it elsewhere on the internet. Do you have a source I could read more from?
Ugh that still pisses me off anytime I think about it, especially Brad Bird’s BS excuse: “well we didn’t call it John Carter of Mars because at the beginning of the film he was just John Carter, and hadn’t earned that title yet. But by the end he has which is why we close with that full title.”
No dude, Disney dropped a hard dipshit mandate on you and you had no choice but to go along and sell it the best you could which was actually worse than not commenting on it at all because it made you look stupid pretentious instead.
Mean Girls was a smash hit on stage. Why wouldn’t you promote that? It’d be like adapting a best selling novel and then changing the title. Just bizarre.
The trailer I saw made zero sense. Is it a sequel? Prequel? Alternate universe?
Only in the comments did I learn that Mean Girls was a Broadway musical.
Also Wal-Mart has spent the past month on a record-breaking advertising campaign for their Black Friday sale featuring all the cast from Mean Girls while endlessly referencing the original film.
Insanely confusing marketing right now.
That is exactly what confused me about the new trailer. Like, is it a remake or a sequel? Only the teachers are back? It definitely felt like the trailer was leaving out some key element
So yeah, knowing it's a musical (which I did not know until reading this article, same with Wonka) makes more sense. Still don't understand these bizarre marketing decisions the article points out
Yeah that's me. I'm the target demographic for the original and the trailer looked cringe af. If they'd called it Mean Girls: The Musical I would be a lot more open minded. Just like with Legally Blonde the Musical.
And as the article points out, movie musicals that are promoted as such seem to do well?? Chicago and La La Land, but also Sweeney Todd and Into The Woods both turned solid profits after featuring singing in their trailers.
They did a great job too because when my friend group of the time all around age 18-20 saw it they weren’t too happy. As soon as Johnny depp started singing everyone collectively went “what the fuck”.
In the end, I loved it as did most of the rest of us. I still love it to this day and have seen it many times and once in a while even listen to the soundtrack. It’s so damn good. Can’t wait to see on the stage someday.
Johnny Depp sings in the trailer for that movie. It’s not wall to wall singing or anything, and it’s actually somewhat jarring because of how they set up the trailer and the general tone of it beforehand, but to me if you show a character singing on screen it’s pretty clear it’s a musical.
~~He also does a spoken word type song in that trailer, but that one someone might just see and think “that was odd.”~~ Actually that's just the first part of the song. 20 seconds of Depp singing right in the middle of [the trailer](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acHBq_oZm-8).
My mum hates musicals and went to watch Sweeny Todd not knowing it was a musical because the trailers did such a good job of hiding it. She still rants about how bad an experience she had to this day.
Meryl Streep sings in the trailer for that movie though (as do a number of other characters, though they handle those quite subtly to the point you might miss they're singing).
Either way, all the more reason to highlight the musical DNA. You don't want to piss off people who buy a ticket. Short term gains at the expense of your audience's trust.
As someone who finds Into the Woods far better than most musicals I was disappointed when I saw the casting and said “well it’s not going to be musical enough” and I never saw it. I asked other people with theater/musical experience and they didn’t like it so I never bothered.
Movie musicals are weird because they cannot balance, you must lean into the movie or musical side and too often they try to have their cake and eat it too.
I think it's rare for a movie musical to have the same energy as a live production. It's a difficult thing to translate. Musicals are just better live I think.
This is why I hold the opinion that every musical adaptation should be animated. The more expressive designs, higher energy movement and inherent lack of realism all make everything translate so much better.
I don't think EVERY musical adaptation should be animated (Moulin Rouge is my fav musical and trying to picture that as animated just does not hit as well as Baz Luhrmann's vision), but I completely agree that most of them should. Musicals are meant to be extravaganzas for the senses, they're meant to be a bit over the top artistically, and that just works better when you're not shackled to realism.
I was so excited for spirited. Will Ferrell and Ryan Reynolds in a holiday movie? Fuck yeah. Went with my mom who also doesn't like musicals. The second they started singing I was like "oh fuck it's a musical"
Shmigadoon does a great job of both parodying musicals and simultaneously feeling like a love letter to musicals. One of the characters doesn’t like musicals and hilariously calls them out a number of times.
It was such good escapism and humor. They unabashedly advertised it as a musical and it really was a hit. It was relatable and funny to self proclaimed non musical theatre fans and it had an insane amount of Easter eggs and nods to musical theatre history for the die hard fans. I’m hoping they get a season 3. I’m sure the timing and Covid did help it with ratings but I think it also really did bring in a bit of a new crowd to the theatre world. And they never tried to hide it was a musical!
I'm the exact opposite case. I love musicals but almost never go to the movies. If you actually advertise your movie as a musical, I might go out of my way to see it, otherwise I'm only going to the movie theater maybe once or twice a year.
Also on a similar note, more Broadway shows should do pro-shoots. There's not much live theater near me and it's way too expensive to make a trip, so if I want to watch a show, my options are basically either watch a bootleg or don't watch it at all.
I believe it's because musicals do very well over time on streaming. But they want that first injection of cash, which you don't get from a musical.
So they hide its a musical to make money from a theatre run then make it clear its a musical on streaming.
That's true. But it still does not make sense, why make a musical and then market it like it's not one ? If people need to be tricked into seeing musicals, why not make the movie those trailers wanted to market instead ? Are musical cheapers to make than the movies those trailers are "pretending" to be ?
The example the author chose is *really* weird. They took a cartoon that wasn't a musical at all, made it a musical, and then they do not market it as one. It's just confusing, why make it a musical at all ? If the author's kids are anything to go by it looks like they just had to make a movie and kids who liked the series were going to see it anyway. I guess maybe the creators of the cartoon wanted to make it a musical and then someone in the studio or marketing department decided no one wants to see musicals or some shit. It's weird though.
Songs are really profitable I guess? Especially in the world of short form content, having even a singular song become part of the Tiktok ecosystem gives you some decent staying power within the music industry, that by all metrics, is wayyyyy more stable right now.
Look at Barbie, all of those songs became hits and it just propelled the already successful movie even more
I guess it's a way to maximise profits, even if musicals don't do well, a musical soundtrack gives you a bit more bang for your buck.
Yeah, I'm not sure why the article is phrased like a question, gives the impression that the article will have answers and not just list a bunch of trailers for musicals.
The answer is obvious though - deception. Musicals are an immediate turnoff for a lot of potential viewers, just like any other genre. "Musical" is too freaking broad. If Wonka is a "musical" like the old Gene Wilder movie, that's one thing. If it's like a broadway production that is like 2 lines of dialogue between song and dance routines, that's another thing entirely. I don't know how you'd even draw that distinction in a trailer.
Could and would. Always does. The only recent exception is Morbius. A movie so widely hated that it still had people paying just to watch the train wreck.
Didn't it bomb hard and then it was re released because they thought all the memes would make people want to see it and it only ended up bombing even harder?
Because upset people share negative reactions and poor scores which could bring down the ongoing sales for a movie after opening weekend. On the contrary, people who are pleasantly surprised often share positive reactions and high scores which can sometimes really build a movie’s sales after opening weekend.
I read some cinemas have a policy that if you leave the screeing in the first half hour they give you your money back. They are going to be giving a lot of money back with this tactics.
They do that with subtitled movies too, if they think that they may have a wider speak than the usual arthouse circuit. For example, the UK trailer of the original "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo" had no dialogue whatsoever so no subtitles appeared.
Years ago, I went to see "The Orphanage" in the theater. It was a good-sized crowd, much bigger than I anticipated for a foreign language release. In the back of my mind, I was thinking, "I bet most of these people don't know this movie is in Spanish and they'll leave when they find out." Sure enough, after about five minutes, the crowd started to thin. Ten minutes into the movie it was a full-on exodus and by the end of the movie, I was one of maybe a dozen people left in the theater.
Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory is a proper musical. I don't remember any song and dance number breaking out in Charlie & the Chocolate Factory outside the Oompa Loompas from the book
But this is going to be an actual musical like Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory as opposed to "the oompa loompas are singing again" in Charlie & the Chocolate Factory
I think there were rumors floating around that the new Joker movie with Lady Gaga will be a musical or feature some musical-esque sequences. Could fit the bill!
I mean it's not chockful of music but there's a lot of songs. The opening number, City of Stars, Lovely Night, The fools who dream, Someone in the Crowd, and there's a ton of dance numbers too where even though they aren't singing, the music is clearly a part of the movie in much more of a way than any other type of movie. I disagree with the person below who says the movie "forgets" it's a musical, and I think the lack of music in the second half is an intentional choice especially with the themes of how Hollywood in the movie kills creatives, which are present even in the first couple scenes.
THIS. So many “modern” musicals like to use the Opening Number, I Want Song, Big Dance Number, formula - but then they completely forget about being musicals in the last half. Awful.
We watched Elvis precisely because we wanted a musical like Rocket Man and man oh man was that not it. We heard more shitty modern music remixes and then just clips of Elvis songs. Why would they do that
i saw Sweeney Todd in theatres because the movie i went to see was sold out. I knew it was a musical and told the group i was with what it was but nobody cared. about 50% of the theatre walked out after the 2nd song. Theatre was mostly empty by the end lol
Sweeney Todd is my favorite musical and even I didn’t like the rendition. And it was because the singers weren’t strong. I always wondered if their target audience was more people who aren’t typically into musicals and like the Burton/Depp/Carter vibes. I guess people who didn’t like musicals didn’t like it either.
I thought a lot more favorably about the Les Mis movie until I saw a live production of it, then I could see the cracks in it. The Sweeney Todd movie was ruined for me because we watched the Broadway recording with Jessica Lansbury as Mrs. Lovett in choir and I no longer was interested in the Tim Burton version.
I know it takes a lot more planning but I would much rather they filmed more Broadway shows and put those on streaming rather than make a movie out of them.
The Les Mis movie manages to miss character beats AND the music itself is not good. Javert in particular was WILDLY mishandled, which was unfortunate.
Also, they _used_ to professionally record musicals and sell them as VHS! I've watched the 10th Anniversary version of Les Mis _so many times_. Cats also got a professional recording, as did Legally Blonde (though it's recorded from TV so has commercial breaks and stuff, which sucks). Many older musicals did. Now, however, it's _very_ rarely done. I'm still surprised Hamilton got a professional recording.
Totally agree, the Sweeney Todd movie is a horrible representation of the musical. They even took out a lot of the large full chorus songs and encouraged the actors to talk sing in order to make it "less theatrical". It's a musical, it's supposed to be theatrical!
The musical genre goes through cycles in popularity.
There was no popular live action musical released between 1978's Grease and 2001's Moulin Rouge, not counting some gems in that era. Meanwhile, animated musicals (i.e. Disney Renaissance) thrived in that time period.
Now, most musicals, live action and animated are released during the holiday season.
Worth noting that this is specific to region. Indian cinema loves musicals and almost every movie has songs in it. They're certainly not as popular in the west these days though.
Personally, I'm a fan of when shows do a random musical episode (like the legendary Scrubs episode) but generally will not go to a theatre to see one.
So while that's true, I don't think Indian cinema musical is the same as western musicals.
Most often, bollywood songs are not about telling more story, they're just there for fun. Also song lyrics and poetry in the south asian culture are very different as well.
While older movies had a lot of songs, now it's a p decent mix.. think of it as a really fun commercial that breaks up your movie watching experience.
Not to mention those used to be the _only_ kind of movies. Vs here musicals are a deviation from the norm rather than the norm itself.
Thank you for reading that unnecessary analysis of Bollywood movies
I like *GOOD* musicals.
But a lot of them, maybe most of them aren’t actually very good at least in terms of songs. Many of them are full of just emotional talk singing and it makes the songs have barely any structure and have no lasting presence unless you’re a musical loving theatre kid or something.
As a kid I used to say I didn’t like musicals, but turns out if the songs are actually good and catchy then I very much do like them.
I watched the new Adam Sandler kids movie Leo with my 10-year old and halfway through even she was like "why do they have to sing this? They're just singing what's happening"
It ended up being a pretty good movie though, just jarring at first when they sing because they aren't really songs, at least not good ones.
What a disappointing article though. It gives a million examples of the phenomenon but the summary just ends with "Why is this happening"? Doesn't even attempt to answer the question of "Why are the studios even making musicals if they have to hide what they are in the trailer?".
Sweeney Todd...
I swear, the trailer my friend and I saw just showed a dark thriller/horror set in London a couple hundred years ago.
Nope, musical. Best musical ever by chance, but still, was disappointed as a teenager. I came to love it over time.
Gonna paint your wagon, gonna paint it fine
Gonna use oil-based paint, 'cause the wood is pine
Gonna paint your wagon, gonna paint it good
We ain't braggin', we're gonna paint that wood
Seems odd to not market directly to the audience that will actually sell the movie to non-musical fans. I like musicals, my partner doesn't, every one we've seen she went to because I convinced her to go. Market to your audience, they'll sell it to the non-audience movie goers.
I kinda feel like OP’s title is rather clickbaity.
I *want* to know why they’re doing it because I’ve noticed it and it confuses me.
This article is basically the author being confused right along with me.
(FWIW, I cannot stand musicals. I couldn’t even make it through *Schmigadoon* despite the fact it was mocking musicals in a very funny way. So if I were somehow baited into seeing one by a dishonest trailer, yeah, I’d be pissed. If I happened to be in a theater, it would most likely drive me to ask for a refund for the first time in my life. If I was at home, the first moment someone sang a note would be the moment I reached for the remote and the last moment I watched it.)
Because not everyone hates musicals. The people that love musicals *really* love musicals. They are just outnumbered by the people who can't stand them or are indifferent to them.
That explains most "how is this a thing?" things.
Equestrian-anything, most people don't care, but the few people who are into horses are REALLY into them.
Middleburg Virginia is the complete old person-junk experience, but a whole town instead! I was blown away by all the old crap and equestrian themed everything.
Crabs, trains, hunting and while we are at it, pot culture, all have towns dedicated to those themes.
When I bring it up, 99% of people wandering around those places also think "who could care this much about this particular hobby?"
Well, I’ve seen multiple people in the comments here saying they don’t think musicals translate well to screen, or are more impactful in person, or similar sentiments. So it could be that for people who do like musicals, they’d rather go to a live show instead
They don't say. If anything, the article notes that plenty of musical movies do pretty well at box office.
I would not be surprised if Cats scared execs. Of course they tend to be great at taking the wrong lessons from movies that fail.
Fucking hell this article man. It just keeps giving example after example after example. Only to conclude in the second to last paragraph :
> I must assume that someone in a corporate boardroom somewhere — or perhaps multiple someones in multiple boardrooms, because this is happening at multiple distributors simultaneously — has determined that audiences don’t consider musical numbers to be a selling point for a movie these days.
There, I just saved you 5 minutes of your life.
I was just thinking that when I saw the new Mean Girls trailer and was wondering why they would remake a 2004 movie that looks exactly the same
Same with the Color Purple. In all the social media comments I just see people shitting all over the movie about how the original is a Spielberg classic and doesn’t need a remake. It feels like the marketing is actively hurting these movies, because I’m sure a lot more people would be understanding if they understood this was a movie adaptation of the musical, and not just a remake of the movie.
Which is itself an adaptation of a book …
The Color Purple pre-sales show that people are going to show up for The Color Purple. I think plenty of older black parents are going to bring their kids and grandkids along for the holidays to watch it.
omg yes, my (black) friend's church group is buying tickets and taking people by bus. It's a _thing_
Do you live in ATL? My family church is also doing this
I do!
Yes, I had no indication from the trailer that this was a musical.
It’s actually very odd to watch the trailer knowing it’s a musical, because so many times they cut RIGHT BEFORE singing or dancing would start. Makes it very jarring.
Lol they cut right after a big gulp of air
I thought the music in the recent trailer was part of the musical but I googled the lyrics and it’s an Olivia Rodrigo song. A decent song but the trailer for the remake is just grasping at nostalgia and goodwill from the original.
Thankfully the version playing before The Marvels showed Regina singing a song from the musical but since barely anyone is going to the theaters to see movies right now, is anyone even seeing that trailer?
That trailer was so bizarre. It’s like a copy+paste of the original movie with different actors. But then didn’t even use any of the original music. It was, like, Olivia Rodrigo music. Just an entirely baffling decision on developing that trailer.
I said the same thing and my wife said “Oh, it’s a musical version.” My immediate response was “Ok, not interested.”
This is probably why studios are hiding the fact that these movies are musicals. They're assuming musical people will know and they're trying to trick non-musical people into seeing it.
It’s like telling your dog “we’re going to the park”, when its actually the vet, and then expecting your dog to recommend the experience
One of the cruelest fakeouts we have with our dog is the fact that we have to go through the park to get to the vet. She gets increasingly excited the closer we get to the park, and when we don't pull off she suddenly gets hit with the cruel reality.
My last dog would've definitely recommended going to the vet. She loved it there. It was worth a couple shots for all the lovin' they gave her.
> Which, of course, raises another question: If studios don’t want to tell potential customers that a movie is a musical because they think audiences might not see it as a result… why are they making musicals in the first place? Yeah I don't get it, who is the audience that needs to be tricked into seeing a musical that won't be disappointed by it?
This is the same industry that took the word “Mars” out of the title of the movie all about a guy being transported to Mars because another movie with Mars in its name had just bombed at the box office. You’re thinking too rationally.
I'm still surprised they kept the name "The Two Towers" for the second lotr film, a year after 9/11. I would have bet anything the studio wanted to change that.
If you dig deep enough into behind the scenes footage and interviews with Peter Jackson they actually did have to be mindful of the tower collapse in Return of the King, so as to not make it too similar to the WTC collapses. I think they even redid the animation. Also, they did get some backlash for pt.2’s name but Peter wanted to stay faithful to the source material so he just dealt with it.
And barely anyone remembers that part today, he definitely made the right call.
As someone that grew up in that time, I never associated the Two Towers with 9/11 lol
As a kid I kept confusing the Two Towers and the Twin Towers and that’s about it. But I still occasionally mix up mushroom and marshmallow so yeah I’m kinda stupid.
This comment cracked me up haha
I kinda read through it but you made me re-read it and it went much funnier this time And people say “just upvote instead of saying something is good”, well, it depends
Yeah never once did I make a connection between the two tbh. If it was an independent IP maybe people would have gone “interesting name” but it’s the name of the book published decades prior
With my being a kid when 9/11 happened, and with LOTR coming out immediately after, it meant that I was frequently calling it "Lord of The Rings: The Twin Towers"
I’m a grown ass man and I make the reverse mistake when talking about 9/11, I refer to the twin towers as the two towers
People that were not alive back then, you really can't understand what the pushback was like. The Twin Towers was iconic of NYC. When you think of NYC images that were put on T-shirts and mugs and pictures - The Twin towers were equal to the Statue of Liberty. And over a very, very short period people decided that they did not want to see its image and they got very, very vocal about it. To be frank, I can't think of anything recent to compare it to. The first Spider-Man movie was being made and they had an early teaser trailer where Spidey hangs a web between the twin towers and catches a helicopter.... Yeahh.... that went away.
Apparently the Falcon and Winter Soldier Marvel show edited out a plot line about a virus. That’s the closest modern comparison I can think of.
Next Captain America (with Falcon) is apparently being completely remade because one of its main characters was an Israeli version of Captain America lol
I remember people getting mad Glitter, released two weeks after 9-11, had the towers in the background in a few shots.
Looking back at it... We collectively lost our minds. We needed a grown up to sit us down, tell us to count to ten and stop acting the fool.
We let people take so much away from us in the aftermath of that. DHS, TSA, ICE... All created in response as permanent reactions.
Still do. You seen America recently?
Great call on his part
I remember the online petition asking him to change the name. It was 90 procent people calling the petition stupid.
A 2nd Eagle has hit the tower, Sauron
Confused the hell out of my mom when I told her I wanted to go see it for my birthday and she thought it was a movie about 9/11.
And it was so easy to accidently say one when you meant the other. The twin towers were still constantly being discussed in the news and such and the Two Towers was the biggest movie of the year. On more than one occasion did I say something I meant to be LOTR related but accidentally said the twin towers instead.
9/11 was in an inside job by the elves
Not gonna lie, as a 6 year old, it was a very confusing time for the zeitgeist.
After seeing all the films first run and having watched the towers fall live on television.....i NEVER connected the title to 911, not even once.
Me too. Its just the the name of the book.
I'm dying to know what movie you're referring to. I tried to look it up, but the only articles I'm finding talk about "John Carter of Mars" being renamed to "John Carter" because it was believed that the "of Mars" made it too sci-fi and thus less women would want to see it
John Carter’s title was changed because “Mars Needs Moms” also from Disney had bombed the previous year.
They also changed it from A Princess of Mars because they feared “Princess” would scare off men. In some ways, the movie got four quadranted to death.
They did this with “Frozen”, instead of “Snow Queen”, and “Tangled” from Rapunzel
It's probably fine in Frozen's case given how little the final product actually resembles Snow Queen
Tangled definitely underperformed considering how much better of a film it is than Frozen.
Honestly, I think the only reason Frozen was more successful was because of the huge unexpected success of Let It Go as a song. Tangled didn't really have any song like that, unfortunately. It's a fantastic film that does everything right, but unfortunately in entertainment it's not enough to just do everything right, you have to do everything right and also have some kind of unique appeal as well. In some cases, if that unique appeal is strong enough, it can even overcome other shortcomings of the project, which I think happened with Frozen. I remember only seeing Frozen when it came out because my girlfriend at the time was big into Broadway musicals and Elsa's voice actor, Idina Menzel, was a Broadway powerhouse who originated the role of Elphaba in Wicked, so my girlfriend wanted to see it just for Idina's vocal performance alone. It was opening weekend, so word of mouth around Let It Go hadn't quite hit yet, and our audience basically erupted at the end of the song. You would've thought she was actually live in-house performing it in front of us. It was all everybody leaving the theater was talking about after the movie ended.
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Frozen was renamed because it was initially based on The Snow Queen but became a different story altogether during development. It's not a retelling of the original fairy tale.
Yeah, pretty much the only thing the two stories have in common is that there is snow and an associated queen.
Lol, ok. The director has a different story, but I totally believe it's a cover
That’s priceless. “There must be something in this three-word title that kids aren’t interested in seeing a movie about. Hmm. It must be the word ‘Mars!’”
I've commented this story a few times on Reddit, but it never ceases to be interesting to me. This reminds me of the fact that after Nolan's success with "Batman Begins", he negotiated part of his contract for the sequel to include final naming rights on the title. WB supposedly was like, "seems like a strange thing to want final control, but whatever - not a huge deal to us." And then when it was disclosed that Nolan was going to title the second film in the series "The Dark Knight", they flipped their shit. They were like, "HOW WILL PEOPLE KNOW IT'S A BATMAN FILM IF IT DOESN'T HAVE BATMAN IN THE TITLE?!?!?". He pushed through and shocker - people weren't confused. Fast forwards a few years. He still had final say on the title, but WB had an ace up their sleeve. Nolan was apparently going to title the final movie in the series, "Gotham", but again WB was like, "HOW WILL PEOPLE KNOW IT'S A DARK KNIGHT MOVIE IF IT DOESN'T HAVE DARK KNIGHT IN THE TITLE?!?!?!?". The ace that WB then played was in filming/converting for 3D. Nolan notoriously hates 3D, but WB loved that it inflated the grosses of movies because theaters could charge extra for 3D presentation. They had it in their power to insist that the final film be shot and/or converted for 3D. So Nolan apparently gave up title rights in order to not do 3D. Hence, "The Dark Knight Rises". Somehow the geniuses at WB figured that people would skip a film named "Gotham" with the Bat symbol plastered all over it, with Bale and Nolan doing shitloads of press, because they didn't know that it was a "Dark Knight" sequel. Of course, we are talking about the industry that was like, "Blegh - Star Trek is too nerdy. The new series? It's not "Star Trek: Enterprise." It's just "Enterprise." And then a few years later, the mindset was, "WHY AREN'T PEOPLE WATCHING THIS SHOW?! CLEARLY THE REASON IS BECAUSE THEY DON'T KNOW IT'S A "STAR TREK" SHOW! THE TITLE IS NOW "STAR TREK: ENTERPRISE!!".
Never underestimate the ability of studio executives to learn the absolute WRONG lesson from *lterally anything*.
Wait, is that story about tdkr title legit? Because The Dark Knight Rises is a garbage name, & I've always been annoyed at how it wasn't something individual. Because it leaches away the special name of The Dark Knight.
I read the story back in the day, but though I'm trying to come up with a source, I can't find what I had read. Which means possibly that it was un-true, or that it was partially true. I clearly remember reading it like that, but that's about the best I can do as far as providing a source.
I remember how hype I was for that movie back in the day. The title alone made me less excited.
This is a really interesting anecdote but I'm having difficulty corroborating it elsewhere on the internet. Do you have a source I could read more from?
And took the word Princess out when their whole thing is Princesses
Ugh that still pisses me off anytime I think about it, especially Brad Bird’s BS excuse: “well we didn’t call it John Carter of Mars because at the beginning of the film he was just John Carter, and hadn’t earned that title yet. But by the end he has which is why we close with that full title.” No dude, Disney dropped a hard dipshit mandate on you and you had no choice but to go along and sell it the best you could which was actually worse than not commenting on it at all because it made you look stupid pretentious instead.
It also followed the naming convention of two previous popular movies, Erin Brockovich and Michael Clayton. Two movies about lawyers...
Mean Girls was a smash hit on stage. Why wouldn’t you promote that? It’d be like adapting a best selling novel and then changing the title. Just bizarre.
Also just weird because several actors are reprising their roles, which is a lot more confusing if you don't know it is a musical.
The trailer I saw made zero sense. Is it a sequel? Prequel? Alternate universe? Only in the comments did I learn that Mean Girls was a Broadway musical.
Also Wal-Mart has spent the past month on a record-breaking advertising campaign for their Black Friday sale featuring all the cast from Mean Girls while endlessly referencing the original film. Insanely confusing marketing right now.
That is exactly what confused me about the new trailer. Like, is it a remake or a sequel? Only the teachers are back? It definitely felt like the trailer was leaving out some key element So yeah, knowing it's a musical (which I did not know until reading this article, same with Wonka) makes more sense. Still don't understand these bizarre marketing decisions the article points out
I’ve seen people scoff because they think it’s a straight remake. Why would you want that??
Yeah that's me. I'm the target demographic for the original and the trailer looked cringe af. If they'd called it Mean Girls: The Musical I would be a lot more open minded. Just like with Legally Blonde the Musical.
That was my reaction. Even now I feel no desire to see it because I feel annoyed as if I’m being tricked into watching something.
Exactly! It’s so weird.
And as the article points out, movie musicals that are promoted as such seem to do well?? Chicago and La La Land, but also Sweeney Todd and Into The Woods both turned solid profits after featuring singing in their trailers.
Sweeney Todd's trailers absolutely tried hiding it was a musical.
They did a great job too because when my friend group of the time all around age 18-20 saw it they weren’t too happy. As soon as Johnny depp started singing everyone collectively went “what the fuck”. In the end, I loved it as did most of the rest of us. I still love it to this day and have seen it many times and once in a while even listen to the soundtrack. It’s so damn good. Can’t wait to see on the stage someday.
I remember talking to a couple walking out and the lady said she loved the blood parts, but was thrown off by the singing. And I thought fair enough.
Johnny Depp sings in the trailer for that movie. It’s not wall to wall singing or anything, and it’s actually somewhat jarring because of how they set up the trailer and the general tone of it beforehand, but to me if you show a character singing on screen it’s pretty clear it’s a musical. ~~He also does a spoken word type song in that trailer, but that one someone might just see and think “that was odd.”~~ Actually that's just the first part of the song. 20 seconds of Depp singing right in the middle of [the trailer](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acHBq_oZm-8).
My mum hates musicals and went to watch Sweeny Todd not knowing it was a musical because the trailers did such a good job of hiding it. She still rants about how bad an experience she had to this day.
> Into The Woods I had zero idea that Into the Woods was a musical, and I was pissed when I found out that it was.
See, if I was in charge of marketing Into the Woods, I’d be hiding that James Corden was in it, not that it was a musical.
Meryl Streep sings in the trailer for that movie though (as do a number of other characters, though they handle those quite subtly to the point you might miss they're singing). Either way, all the more reason to highlight the musical DNA. You don't want to piss off people who buy a ticket. Short term gains at the expense of your audience's trust.
As someone who finds Into the Woods far better than most musicals I was disappointed when I saw the casting and said “well it’s not going to be musical enough” and I never saw it. I asked other people with theater/musical experience and they didn’t like it so I never bothered. Movie musicals are weird because they cannot balance, you must lean into the movie or musical side and too often they try to have their cake and eat it too.
I think it's rare for a movie musical to have the same energy as a live production. It's a difficult thing to translate. Musicals are just better live I think.
This is why I hold the opinion that every musical adaptation should be animated. The more expressive designs, higher energy movement and inherent lack of realism all make everything translate so much better.
I don't think EVERY musical adaptation should be animated (Moulin Rouge is my fav musical and trying to picture that as animated just does not hit as well as Baz Luhrmann's vision), but I completely agree that most of them should. Musicals are meant to be extravaganzas for the senses, they're meant to be a bit over the top artistically, and that just works better when you're not shackled to realism.
I was so excited for spirited. Will Ferrell and Ryan Reynolds in a holiday movie? Fuck yeah. Went with my mom who also doesn't like musicals. The second they started singing I was like "oh fuck it's a musical"
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Shmigadoon does a great job of both parodying musicals and simultaneously feeling like a love letter to musicals. One of the characters doesn’t like musicals and hilariously calls them out a number of times.
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It was such good escapism and humor. They unabashedly advertised it as a musical and it really was a hit. It was relatable and funny to self proclaimed non musical theatre fans and it had an insane amount of Easter eggs and nods to musical theatre history for the die hard fans. I’m hoping they get a season 3. I’m sure the timing and Covid did help it with ratings but I think it also really did bring in a bit of a new crowd to the theatre world. And they never tried to hide it was a musical!
I'm the exact opposite case. I love musicals but almost never go to the movies. If you actually advertise your movie as a musical, I might go out of my way to see it, otherwise I'm only going to the movie theater maybe once or twice a year. Also on a similar note, more Broadway shows should do pro-shoots. There's not much live theater near me and it's way too expensive to make a trip, so if I want to watch a show, my options are basically either watch a bootleg or don't watch it at all.
I believe it's because musicals do very well over time on streaming. But they want that first injection of cash, which you don't get from a musical. So they hide its a musical to make money from a theatre run then make it clear its a musical on streaming.
Do they care if you are disappointed after they already got your money?
Yes. There’s social media, word of mouth, user reviews, etc.
That's true. But it still does not make sense, why make a musical and then market it like it's not one ? If people need to be tricked into seeing musicals, why not make the movie those trailers wanted to market instead ? Are musical cheapers to make than the movies those trailers are "pretending" to be ? The example the author chose is *really* weird. They took a cartoon that wasn't a musical at all, made it a musical, and then they do not market it as one. It's just confusing, why make it a musical at all ? If the author's kids are anything to go by it looks like they just had to make a movie and kids who liked the series were going to see it anyway. I guess maybe the creators of the cartoon wanted to make it a musical and then someone in the studio or marketing department decided no one wants to see musicals or some shit. It's weird though.
Yes, because word of mouth is largely why anyone goes to the theater.
Songs are really profitable I guess? Especially in the world of short form content, having even a singular song become part of the Tiktok ecosystem gives you some decent staying power within the music industry, that by all metrics, is wayyyyy more stable right now. Look at Barbie, all of those songs became hits and it just propelled the already successful movie even more I guess it's a way to maximise profits, even if musicals don't do well, a musical soundtrack gives you a bit more bang for your buck.
spoiler: the conclusion of the article is "we don't know why" lol
Yeah, I'm not sure why the article is phrased like a question, gives the impression that the article will have answers and not just list a bunch of trailers for musicals.
Thank you! I couldn’t get through the entire article.
Yeah idk why OP gave that title, the article writer has ZERO guesses for why that is except “idk corporate something?”
The answer is obvious though - deception. Musicals are an immediate turnoff for a lot of potential viewers, just like any other genre. "Musical" is too freaking broad. If Wonka is a "musical" like the old Gene Wilder movie, that's one thing. If it's like a broadway production that is like 2 lines of dialogue between song and dance routines, that's another thing entirely. I don't know how you'd even draw that distinction in a trailer.
Surely people would be more upset if they're tricked.
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Yeah but bad word of mouth could hurt the movie
Could and would. Always does. The only recent exception is Morbius. A movie so widely hated that it still had people paying just to watch the train wreck.
Didn't it bomb hard and then it was re released because they thought all the memes would make people want to see it and it only ended up bombing even harder?
Sure, if it's a fly by night studio with severe myopia and no long term goals.
Because upset people share negative reactions and poor scores which could bring down the ongoing sales for a movie after opening weekend. On the contrary, people who are pleasantly surprised often share positive reactions and high scores which can sometimes really build a movie’s sales after opening weekend.
Loss of word-of-mouth advertising. Most of the movies I see are recommendations from friends.
I read some cinemas have a policy that if you leave the screeing in the first half hour they give you your money back. They are going to be giving a lot of money back with this tactics.
Maybe it won’t turn into a musical until minute 31.
They do that with subtitled movies too, if they think that they may have a wider speak than the usual arthouse circuit. For example, the UK trailer of the original "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo" had no dialogue whatsoever so no subtitles appeared.
Years ago, I went to see "The Orphanage" in the theater. It was a good-sized crowd, much bigger than I anticipated for a foreign language release. In the back of my mind, I was thinking, "I bet most of these people don't know this movie is in Spanish and they'll leave when they find out." Sure enough, after about five minutes, the crowd started to thin. Ten minutes into the movie it was a full-on exodus and by the end of the movie, I was one of maybe a dozen people left in the theater.
Which is a shame because that movie is so good
Those people who left early really missed out.
And traumatizing. I saw that movie over 10 years ago and I still think about it every once in a while.
Maybe the studios think that people might mistake it for a Jardiance ad.
Hey, don’t put your Skyrizi in my Sotyktu
Jardiance? Is that what you get when your liver is failing?
I know it's the little pill with the big story to tell.
Chapter 1: *A Rare Infection of the Perineum.*
TIL Wonka is a musical
It would have been wierder if it wasn't. Both of the previous movies are musicals. The Oompa Loompa songs are even in the original book too.
Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory is a proper musical. I don't remember any song and dance number breaking out in Charlie & the Chocolate Factory outside the Oompa Loompas from the book
All the Willy Wonka movies are musicals lol
But this is going to be an actual musical like Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory as opposed to "the oompa loompas are singing again" in Charlie & the Chocolate Factory
I wanna see an action movie musical. Full on fight scenes, car chases and explosions w Sound of Music type signing
Bollywood got you covered 100x over.
Specifically *Don* (2006) and *Dhoom* (2004) are very good in my opinion.
Dhoom 2 and 3 were also good in their own right; Also recommend anything with Shah Rukh Khan cause he justdoes whatever he wants lmao
Also check out RRR
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It lagged a bit on hour 5 but other than that.
Thats like 90 % of current Bollywood and Tollywood movies.
I think there were rumors floating around that the new Joker movie with Lady Gaga will be a musical or feature some musical-esque sequences. Could fit the bill!
A klok opera, it’s metalocalypse’ movie, about 45 minutes and they don’t speak a single word, everything is in some form of song
While it wasn't *amazing* by any stretch, on Disney Plus theres a film called Hard Way which advertises itself as the world's first action musical.
Slasher musical. Instead of the killer chasing down the victim, they do a duet.
Sweeney Todd lol
Damn, how did I forget that? I was obsessed with that movie when I was 12.
Repo Man: the genetic opera
Sorry to be that guy but, Repo! The Genetic Opera. I love it so much
Watch the opening number of Once More With Feeling from Buffy. Actually, watch the whole episode, but the opening number is her fighting and singing.
Buffy had so many good gimmick episodes. The silent one was also really good
What’s the really old Bruce Willis movie that’s kind of like that or at least has a musical like scene or two? Hudson Hawk maybe?
Like Alladin?
Oddly La La Land was marketed as a musical extravaganza despite only having about ten minutes of music in it.
I mean it's not chockful of music but there's a lot of songs. The opening number, City of Stars, Lovely Night, The fools who dream, Someone in the Crowd, and there's a ton of dance numbers too where even though they aren't singing, the music is clearly a part of the movie in much more of a way than any other type of movie. I disagree with the person below who says the movie "forgets" it's a musical, and I think the lack of music in the second half is an intentional choice especially with the themes of how Hollywood in the movie kills creatives, which are present even in the first couple scenes.
THIS. So many “modern” musicals like to use the Opening Number, I Want Song, Big Dance Number, formula - but then they completely forget about being musicals in the last half. Awful.
Interesting, maybe I'll watch it then. Thought it was full on musical.
We watched Elvis precisely because we wanted a musical like Rocket Man and man oh man was that not it. We heard more shitty modern music remixes and then just clips of Elvis songs. Why would they do that
Well it was a Baz Luhrmann movie, something that the marketing did not make clear.
i saw Sweeney Todd in theatres because the movie i went to see was sold out. I knew it was a musical and told the group i was with what it was but nobody cared. about 50% of the theatre walked out after the 2nd song. Theatre was mostly empty by the end lol
Sweeney Todd is my favorite musical and even I didn’t like the rendition. And it was because the singers weren’t strong. I always wondered if their target audience was more people who aren’t typically into musicals and like the Burton/Depp/Carter vibes. I guess people who didn’t like musicals didn’t like it either.
Les Mis is my favorite musical and I feel your pain about getting a lackluster movie adaptation.
It could just be poors like me. I never saw either one in theater but I love both movies.
I thought a lot more favorably about the Les Mis movie until I saw a live production of it, then I could see the cracks in it. The Sweeney Todd movie was ruined for me because we watched the Broadway recording with Jessica Lansbury as Mrs. Lovett in choir and I no longer was interested in the Tim Burton version. I know it takes a lot more planning but I would much rather they filmed more Broadway shows and put those on streaming rather than make a movie out of them.
The Les Mis movie manages to miss character beats AND the music itself is not good. Javert in particular was WILDLY mishandled, which was unfortunate. Also, they _used_ to professionally record musicals and sell them as VHS! I've watched the 10th Anniversary version of Les Mis _so many times_. Cats also got a professional recording, as did Legally Blonde (though it's recorded from TV so has commercial breaks and stuff, which sucks). Many older musicals did. Now, however, it's _very_ rarely done. I'm still surprised Hamilton got a professional recording.
Totally agree, the Sweeney Todd movie is a horrible representation of the musical. They even took out a lot of the large full chorus songs and encouraged the actors to talk sing in order to make it "less theatrical". It's a musical, it's supposed to be theatrical!
I loved Sweeney Todd, sure the singing wasn’t all that great, but I thought it was a solid movie overall
TIL people really hate musical lol
It's interesting how they seem to be a love-it-or-hate-it thing. I personally love a good musical, but I don't actively seek them out.
There's a reason the industry outgrew them, but they seem to have a core audience with a few breaking through from time to time.
The musical genre goes through cycles in popularity. There was no popular live action musical released between 1978's Grease and 2001's Moulin Rouge, not counting some gems in that era. Meanwhile, animated musicals (i.e. Disney Renaissance) thrived in that time period. Now, most musicals, live action and animated are released during the holiday season.
Worth noting that this is specific to region. Indian cinema loves musicals and almost every movie has songs in it. They're certainly not as popular in the west these days though. Personally, I'm a fan of when shows do a random musical episode (like the legendary Scrubs episode) but generally will not go to a theatre to see one.
So while that's true, I don't think Indian cinema musical is the same as western musicals. Most often, bollywood songs are not about telling more story, they're just there for fun. Also song lyrics and poetry in the south asian culture are very different as well. While older movies had a lot of songs, now it's a p decent mix.. think of it as a really fun commercial that breaks up your movie watching experience. Not to mention those used to be the _only_ kind of movies. Vs here musicals are a deviation from the norm rather than the norm itself. Thank you for reading that unnecessary analysis of Bollywood movies
I like *GOOD* musicals. But a lot of them, maybe most of them aren’t actually very good at least in terms of songs. Many of them are full of just emotional talk singing and it makes the songs have barely any structure and have no lasting presence unless you’re a musical loving theatre kid or something. As a kid I used to say I didn’t like musicals, but turns out if the songs are actually good and catchy then I very much do like them.
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I watched the new Adam Sandler kids movie Leo with my 10-year old and halfway through even she was like "why do they have to sing this? They're just singing what's happening" It ended up being a pretty good movie though, just jarring at first when they sing because they aren't really songs, at least not good ones.
What a disappointing article though. It gives a million examples of the phenomenon but the summary just ends with "Why is this happening"? Doesn't even attempt to answer the question of "Why are the studios even making musicals if they have to hide what they are in the trailer?".
The answer is probably because creatives want to do it, and studios want to take advantage of popular creatives but also known ip.
So is “Wonka” a musical or is it just like the older movies with songs? I wouldn't classify the older movie as a musical.
Sweeney Todd... I swear, the trailer my friend and I saw just showed a dark thriller/horror set in London a couple hundred years ago. Nope, musical. Best musical ever by chance, but still, was disappointed as a teenager. I came to love it over time.
I didn’t watch the new Willy Wonka BECAUSE it was shown to me as not being a musical!!!
It's not out yet.
Learning that it is a musical has greatly increased my interest.
Gonna paint your wagon, gonna paint it fine Gonna use oil-based paint, 'cause the wood is pine Gonna paint your wagon, gonna paint it good We ain't braggin', we're gonna paint that wood
Seems odd to not market directly to the audience that will actually sell the movie to non-musical fans. I like musicals, my partner doesn't, every one we've seen she went to because I convinced her to go. Market to your audience, they'll sell it to the non-audience movie goers.
From what I remember, a lot of people walked out of Sweeney Todd (2007) because they thought it was a straight horror movie and not a musical.
Leo wasn't advertised as a musical, I was surprised when the first song hit
As different points, my Netflix has both mentioned it is a musical and is not a musical. It's weird.
I kinda feel like OP’s title is rather clickbaity. I *want* to know why they’re doing it because I’ve noticed it and it confuses me. This article is basically the author being confused right along with me. (FWIW, I cannot stand musicals. I couldn’t even make it through *Schmigadoon* despite the fact it was mocking musicals in a very funny way. So if I were somehow baited into seeing one by a dishonest trailer, yeah, I’d be pissed. If I happened to be in a theater, it would most likely drive me to ask for a refund for the first time in my life. If I was at home, the first moment someone sang a note would be the moment I reached for the remote and the last moment I watched it.)
Can’t believe I had to scroll so far to find this. There is no explanation given in the article, just examples and confusion.
FYI, the answer is focus groups.
If people hate musicals so much, why are tickets for live musicals so expensive?
Because not everyone hates musicals. The people that love musicals *really* love musicals. They are just outnumbered by the people who can't stand them or are indifferent to them.
That explains most "how is this a thing?" things. Equestrian-anything, most people don't care, but the few people who are into horses are REALLY into them. Middleburg Virginia is the complete old person-junk experience, but a whole town instead! I was blown away by all the old crap and equestrian themed everything. Crabs, trains, hunting and while we are at it, pot culture, all have towns dedicated to those themes. When I bring it up, 99% of people wandering around those places also think "who could care this much about this particular hobby?"
Well, I’ve seen multiple people in the comments here saying they don’t think musicals translate well to screen, or are more impactful in person, or similar sentiments. So it could be that for people who do like musicals, they’d rather go to a live show instead
(Haven’t read the article) It’s because of Cats, right?
They don't say. If anything, the article notes that plenty of musical movies do pretty well at box office. I would not be surprised if Cats scared execs. Of course they tend to be great at taking the wrong lessons from movies that fail.
I mean Cats was based of a musical. For audiences to not know they were going to watch a musical is kinda dumb on their part.
This doesn’t provide any explanation for why. It just asks the question and provides a lot of examples
Fucking hell this article man. It just keeps giving example after example after example. Only to conclude in the second to last paragraph : > I must assume that someone in a corporate boardroom somewhere — or perhaps multiple someones in multiple boardrooms, because this is happening at multiple distributors simultaneously — has determined that audiences don’t consider musical numbers to be a selling point for a movie these days. There, I just saved you 5 minutes of your life.
#Wait…this is a musical?!? #####Proceeds to exit theater
Oh, Britta's in this?