This winter saw the back-to-back releases of three movie musicals: Wonka, The Color Purple and Mean Girls. However, many cinema-goers would have been surprised to find these were musicals at all, considering the lack of any such suggestion in their marketing.
All three films are based on existing stories. Their slogans read “discover how Willy became Wonka”, “a bold new take on a beloved classic” and “not your mother’s Mean Girls”. Each indicates originality and change without specifying that the change in question is musical. But why have film studios chosen this strategy?
Writing for Forbes, critic Jeetendr Sehdev called the “covert operation” “counterintuitive”, because it runs the risk of alienating a consumer culture that values transparency.
YouTube’s community of musical-themed content creators were also widely disapproving, questioning the implied antipathy towards musicals. If such antipathy exists, they ask, then why are film studios making musicals in the first place? Well, because the technique seems to work.
Musicals at the box office
According to Paramount’s president of marketing and distribution, Marc Weinstock, the word “musical” has “the potential to turn off audiences” – a sentiment supported by statistics.
YouTube documentary channel Wait in the Wings has highlighted the stark contrast in box office figures between musical films that market themselves as “musicals” and those that don’t.
While In the Heights (2021) and Dear Evan Hansen (2021) – films that proudly shared their musical chops in their trailers – lost money, La La Land (2016) and Rocket Man (2019) – films that didn’t – made huge returns. The popularity of “secret musicals” suggests audiences do enjoy musicals, but perhaps reluctantly.
Demographics are one factor. While musical theatre has long been stereotyped as predominately enjoyed by women and gay men, Hollywood remains largely male dominated. In 2022, women accounted for just 18% of directors working on the top 250 films of the year.
Saltburn director Emerald Fennell has highlighted a stigma around “the stuff that girls traditionally like”, challenging why they aren’t “taken seriously”. Musicals, which reside in this category, persistently challenge what it means to be “serious” by conveying dark themes and important social topics through the conventionally light methods of song and dance – Show Boat (1927), Cabaret (1966), and Spring Awakening (2006) come to mind.
If done well, the music does not dull the gravity of the themes, but transcribes them into (perhaps unexpected) words, tone and movement, creating a powerful and subversive spectacle.
No matter how much public and critical acclaim they might receive, “girl’s things” cannot seem to escape their terminal reputation of unseriousness.
Such prejudices play a part in the musical’s taboo status, as well as the bad taste left by notable failures (sorry Cats). However, I believe another reason lies in the “musical” label and its tendency to overpower and absorb a work’s identity.
The power of the ‘musical label’
For example, few would describe Sweeney Todd (1979) as a “horror” and leave it at that – arguably, the word “musical” is the first to come to mind. Perhaps this has the potential to cause lethargy for audiences, and undesirable limitations for directors who might want their work to encompass other genres.
Mean Girls (2004) and Mean Girls the Broadway musical (2017) are two distinctly different works. As the new musical Mean Girls film (2024) feels more like an exciting reimagining of the original film, with Tina Fey and Tim Meadows reprising their roles, than an adaptation of the stage play, it is left with little capacity to also embrace being a musical. Indeed, Weinstock calls the film a “broad comedy with music” that “could be considered a musical”, effectively hedging the film’s bets and attempting to shoo away the term “musical” as its defining identity.
What about Wonka? Perhaps we must think back to The Greatest Showman (2017) and its disappointing opening weekend. It was the film’s soundtrack that saved it from being a box office flop. The songs were a hit, providing great slow-burn advertising for the film, which grew in popularity with time. Maybe it was the success of this slow-burn tactic that inspired Wonka – a similarly spectacular story of an eccentric entrepreneur – to keep its music a secret.
Some critics have struggled to reconcile The Color Purple’s story with the musical format, feeling the music undermines its heavy themes or diminishes its impact.
Similar criticisms surrounded Les Misérables when the stage show opened in London in 1985. Perhaps The Color Purple (2023) chose to downplay its musical identity in anticipation of such criticism.
However, among mixed reviews, its champions have applauded what the music brings. For them, the musical format allows audiences to witness Celie’s hope and imagination in vivid detail – to give her joy as much attention as her suffering. The musical number constitutes new realms of storytelling and deepened facets of character. It insists not everything has to be bleak to be taken seriously.
It’s been a strange time for musicals, with theatres still recovering from the pandemic and several prominent movies underperforming. The “secret musical” seems to further highlight the genre’s supposed unpopularity – however, it ultimately suggests its reputation can be teased away once viewers have been persuaded into cinemas.
Maybe as an audience, we don’t really know how we feel about musicals. Or maybe we’re overthinking it. Maybe Wonka simply wanted us to float into the unexpected and lose ourselves. Perhaps the “secret musical” is not a dig at the genre, but a helping hand – a provocative and necessary “bold new take”.
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