4 movie musicals in production/filmed. Wow...

[jpbran]

Posted: 9/20/13 at 11:28pm

When was the last time four movie musicals were being filmed or already in the can ready to be completed/released? Tons of "vapor" over the years with productions never actually shooting a single frame, but we have coming up:
"The Last Five Years" (completed; editing and post production)
"Into The Woods" (shooting)
"Jersey Boys" (shooting)
"Annie" remake (just started shooting)

How much of this is due to "Les Miserables"' $442 million worldwide gross? You think we'll see more being greenlit any time soon, or will the pipeline go dry for a while 'til the industry sees how these do?

[bobs3]

Posted: 9/20/13 at 11:40pm

I think we can expect THE BOOK OF MORMON film in the next couple of years. Scott Rudin owns the film rights and Matt and Trey recently set up their own film production company.

[jpbran]

Posted: 9/20/13 at 11:59pm

I think that may be true since not all of the other BoM productions are as successful as Broadway.

[millie_dillmount]

Posted: 9/21/13 at 1:11am

I don't think this is due to Les Mis success. The thing with Les Mis is it had international appeal, as it was a hit musical in multiple countries. I'm not saying the musicals above won't be successful, but they won't attract the massive audience Les Mis did.

Ever since Chicago, I feel as if there's been talk to turn most Broadway shows into movies. And like you said, tons of it is just talk and may never actually happen.

Keep in mind that there have been many recent movie musical failures (Rent, the Producers, for example). It can be hit or miss.

[CapnHook]

Posted: 9/21/13 at 12:36pm

We can thank CHICAGO for most every movie musical since then. CHICAGO's acclaim and financial success made Hollywood realize that the musical allows its A-listers to shine in a new way that can lure Oscar.

In the two years after CHICAGO won its many awards, studios were grabbing the rights to musicals left and right. Off the top of my head, I can remember PIPPIN, CAROUSEL, DAMN YANKEES, CABARET, GUYS & DOLLS, BYE BYE BIRDIE, and FIDDLER ON THE ROOF all being snatched up. Studios also added to their plate original musicals, such as BOB - THE MUSICAL. Many of these projects fell through with the collapse of Miramax and the failures of RENT and THE PRODUCERS. Both of those films were expected to come out triumphant. Oscar buzz stormed over those two project before they even began shooting. After the box office disappointments, studios became weary of their musical properties and shelved most of those projects.

Cameron Mackintosh was able to get THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA and LES MISERABLES done. Rob Marshall, in hopes he would supply another CHICAGO, got NINE greenlit. And Bill Condon thankfully brought us DREAMGIRLS.

It is exciting to have many new movie musicals on the horizon. I wish them all applause and success, because if these tank, we probably will not see any more for many, many years.

[hak5]

Posted: 9/22/13 at 9:47am

did AMERICAN IDIOT w/ Billy Joe Armstrong start filming yet?

[Mr Roxy]

Posted: 9/22/13 at 10:40am

Hopefully the new Annie musical will be better than original. Than again it could not be worse.

[ErinDillyFan]

Posted: 9/23/13 at 8:56am

Looking at the number of movie musicals produced. The number of originals and broadway remakes hasn't really changed much since the 70s. The failure rate of about 80% is about the rate of non-musical films. It is only that there are so few that we can remember most of them. And frankly, is about the same success rate of stage shows.

[best12bars]

Posted: 9/23/13 at 9:08am

You're forgetting Drowsy Chaperone, unless you don't want to count preproduction. It starts shooting in January and will be released in 2014.

Too soon?

Updated On: 9/23/13 at 09:08 AM

[Claudia Draper]

Posted: 9/23/13 at 9:44am

Let's not forget the mother of them all.... GYPSY.

I am aware that 99.5 % of the world thinks this is dead. There is nothing I can post to sugguest otherwise. Spielberg dropped out of the snipper movie for a reason.. I believe 100% that on Thanksgiving 2014, we will see a Streisand/Spielberg/Gaga/ - production, or we won't.

[g.d.e.l.g.i.]

Posted: 9/23/13 at 11:07am

^ Leaning toward won't. However, if anyone can cash in their chips with a reliable source to get us a look at Julian Fellowes' screenplay, I'll feel a lot more confident about how the eventual film would turn out.

[logan2]

Posted: 9/25/13 at 7:40am

As excited as I am for all the movie musical activity, I just hope and pray that Follies comes to fruition. If done well, I think it could be a true film classic for all time. Fingers crossed.

[g.d.e.l.g.i.]

Posted: 9/25/13 at 9:12am

I've figured out a way to make Gypsy work with Barbra in it, but I'm reasonably confident she'd never do it this way. It would have to be a film within a film, not unlike Richard Burton's Hamlet set in a rehearsal atmosphere, centered around a diva who wants to give one final great performance as Rose and goes to pieces by picture's end.

[BwayGeek2]

Posted: 10/2/13 at 10:38am

I don't think any of these will have the same amount of success that Les Mis had just because that had international appeal. These movie musicals are never as good as the actual shows. There were so many things wrong with the Les Mis movie.

[CarlosAlberto]

Posted: 10/2/13 at 11:57am

These movie musicals are never as good as the actual shows

Tell that to West Side Story and The Sound of Music....

[N2N Nate.]

Posted: 10/2/13 at 12:09pm

Whatever happened to the Spring Awakening Movie? Weren't they suppose to start filming in the spring?

[Liza's Headband]

Posted: 10/2/13 at 1:23pm

Where did you hear/read that?

[ray-andallthatjazz86]

Posted: 10/2/13 at 2:00pm

I believe SPRING AWAKENING was supposed to be an adaptation of the play, not the musical.
I think musicals are doing just fine, there was that huge explosion that happened after CHICAGO and MOULIN ROUGE (which people often forget about, though CHICAGO went into production before MOULIN ROUGE came out, the latter was key in terms of letting Hollywood know that audiences were still in musicals, and Nicole Kidman got her first Oscar nomination from that. I think HAIRSPRAY and MAMMA MIA were so successful that they made up for the bombs that were PHANTOM OF THE OPERA, THE PRODUCERS and RENT (all bombed because they were all virtually unwatchable and poorly made, it's not like they were simply dismissed for being musicals, they were awful movies). Last year we had both LES MISERABLES and PITCH PERFECT. We just need a few of these to be successful every few years, so that they keep getting made. The trend that I noticed is that, unlike almost every other genre, movie musicals actually need to get excellent reviews to do well--except for the big exceptions like LES MIS (which was very polarizing critically) and MAMMA MIA. I can't think of a great movie musical in the 2000s that wasn't a hit--and no, I don't count SWEENEY TODD, which I think works on some levels and then completely fails on others, much like DREAMGIRLS.

[jpbran]

Posted: 10/2/13 at 2:59pm

I wouldn't call POTO a bomb, at least not financially. Grossed about $155m on a $70m budget. And that's not including DVD sales, TV rights, CD sales, etc.

[best12bars]

Posted: 10/2/13 at 3:52pm

Yeah, but it sucked.

[ray-andallthatjazz86]

Posted: 10/2/13 at 6:00pm

According to BoxOfficeMojo.com PHANTOM grossed a little less than $155 mil, and that was worldwide, which is a disastrous number for a film of this magnitude. Remember the budget listed online doesn't include the marketing budget, which tends to be about double the budget. Plus, it's not like the show had a great life on TV/DVD, it was a massive flop and I bet you the studio thought of it as a failure and lost (some) money on it.

[best12bars]

Posted: 10/2/13 at 6:20pm

... not to mention, Andrew Lloyd Webber put up much of the money himself for the film. Warner Bros. distributed it (because Really Useful doesn't have a distribution arm), and they promoted it. But the film's financing came from Webber, which gave him creative control and final say on everything (a mistake, since he's not a filmmaker or film director or producer), but he took a huge personal hit in the wallet as a result.

The biggest mistake? Hiring Joel Schumacher, who made one hideous decision after another while Webber just thought it was "so cool" and kept nodding his head.

[jpbran]

Posted: 10/2/13 at 6:32pm

NO way did they spend $70m marketing POTO. That's the marketing budget for something like a Dreamworks kids film or a big sequel. The general (tho non scientific or all-cases) rule is once you've grossed double the budget, you're probably nearing the break-even point. Rent, Nine and The Producers were financial bombs.

Sure it should have made more as such a visible property, but the word of mouth wasn't great. Made more than I'd have expected considering the hate for it.

[ray-andallthatjazz86]

Posted: 10/2/13 at 7:20pm

Obviously, we'll never know and whatever we write is speculation, but I cannot imagine anyone involved with PHANTOM made any money. Who knows? Maybe they did. I will say though, that after the poor showing of that movie, studios took pause when it came to spending that much money on a huge production like PHANTOM, which should have been a massive hit (much like LES MIS was).
Besty, thanks for bringing up the atrocious direction by Joel Schumacher. I couldn't believe how bad that movie was when I saw it, the casting of Emily Rossum as a star opera singer was a huge misstep, Gerard Butler was laughably campy, and the movie was just dead from beginning to end, never actually creating anything remote to excitement, let alone complexity. I wanted to walk out so badly. Luckily, it was overshadowed by the even more atrocious adaptations of RENT and THE PRODUCERS, the latter ranking as one of the worst movies I've ever seen at a movie theatre.

[MrFerriero]

Posted: 10/4/13 at 12:34pm

13 was just announced as a probable movie, as well as one of my favorites - Lysistrata Jones.