Wicked is a musical. And was a huge hit.
I’m confused about this. Musicals didn’t stop. I feel like this was a ploy to get someone to write these down for you?
Song Sung Blue Wicked (broadway show) Tik Tik Boom Hamilton The Greatest Showman La La Land Les Mis (broadway show) High School Musical Mama Mia (both of them) Sweeney Todd (broadway show) The Heights Chicago (broadway Dream Girls Across the Universe Moulin Rouge (now broadway) HairSpray (now broadway)
This is not even including all the animated ones already mentioned. Unless you mean you just don’t like them, because then you have TV Options
Glee Crazy Ex Girlfriend Schmigadoon Galavant
Almost every tv show now has a musical episode somehow as well. Star Trek Strange new worlds comes to mind.
Musicals have changed and evolved like every of form of visual medium. You also have to account for the general decline of movies. It’s the same reason there are far fewer comedies and they have moved to television. Sadly the block buster is what is keeping the movie industry alive atm.
It’s admittedly been at least 15 years since I saw Dr. Zhivago, but I don’t remember there being singing…
A lot of people shit on it because of the director (the guy that made CATS), but the adaptation of Les Mis is very good. The choice to record the actors singing live gives it a unique, realistic quality.
Would you not consider something like Frozen or Encanto to be musicals or just stuff that resembles a Broadway play? If the latter, I think the market isn’t huge for these movies so studios don’t want to make them. I can only think of one or two that I actually enjoyed. Most of the time the singing takes me out of the movie completely.
Actually it’s interesting, because I guess they’re musicals, but they’re not filling them with, like, musical music anymore.
Instead it’s now just pop songs, you know, standard verse-chorus pattern etc., because then it can get in the charts and make more money that way.
We probably won’t get anything close to a “Poor unfortunate souls”, “Bear neccessities” or “Be prepared” ever again.
La La Land was a pretty good recent musical that won lots of awards. I’m not sure how popular it was. When I saw it in the theater, a lot of the audience seemed to be from an older generation
Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog
There’s an indie production called “EPIC: The Musical” that is absolutely amazing and slowly gathering a cult following on the internet. It’s not a movie though, but a concept album. Fans have added simple drawn animation for each song. This is the most original thing I’ve seen in a while.
I hate musicals.
Except Blues Brothers.
Blues Brothers was cool.
Did people care a lot about Walk The Line? And does that even count as a musical? … Dr Zhivago…?
I used to work in a cinema. When Sweeney Todd was on, people came out 15 minutes after it started, confused and sometimes enraged that “they’re singing in this?!” That’s of course partially because of how that movie was advertised: as a quirky Burton style slasher, no mention of singing. But it’s no coincidence that marketing agencies feel like they have to hide the singing. (Also, this is Germany, the source musical is virtually unknown here)
Wild speculation: international markets have become more important and you have to find ways to make musicals work in different languages. Translating songs is an art in and of itself so localising musicals is more expensive (your local voice actors also need to be able to sing - or you need to hire additional people for the singing). You could just leave the songs in the original language but then of course an important layer of meaning, arguably the entire reason for this to be a musical, is lost to at least a part of the audience. Do subtitles (as I’m pretty sure they did with Sweeney Todd) and people complain about having to read. This might ultimately cause fewer musical films to be green-lit but again, speculation.
Original works are too risky for investors. They want musicals based on existing IP that people can identify immediately.
Welcome to late stage capitalism baby.
