Why aren't there more original musicals?

[u/-RedFox]

LaLa Land was a success on pretty much every level. Although there are obvious disagreements due to the story.

Wicked and Cats are recreations of Broadway. And I'm not going to talk about the Disney animation remakes. Joker 2 doesn't count as it is a musical cover film, in my opinion.

LaLa Land had a manageable budget and pulled off an extraordinary feat, but clearly there are more opportunities.

Singing in the rain and 7 brides for 7 brothers are two perfect examples.

Do you have any insight into why there aren't more attempts at original musicals or musical comedies?

[u/Jedi4Hire]

Do you have any insight into why there aren't more attempts at original musicals or musical comedies?

Yes, these days many corporations/studios are only interested in projects that will make a billion dollars or more.

[u/BrentonHenry2020 → u/Jedi4Hire]

Musicals take a lot of extra work, need exceptional writing and musicians to back it up, and are far from guaranteed to work. There are way more failures than success. Just look at this list:

From Justin to Kelly (2003), box office: $4.93M, budget: $12.0M

The Producers (2005), box office: $38.1M, budget: $45.0M

Across the Universe (2007), box office: $29.6M, budget: $45.0M

Nine (2009), box office: $54.0M, budget: $80.0M

Burlesque (2010), box office: $89.5M, budget: $55.0M

Rock of Ages (2012), box office: $59.4M, budget: $75.0M

Cats (2019), box office: $75.5M, budget: $95.0M

Dear Evan Hansen (2021), box office: $19.1M, budget: $28.0M

[u/landmanpgh → u/BrentonHenry2020]

Holy shit Cats made $75 million dollars and nearly broke even? That's honestly amazing.

[u/BrentonHenry2020 → u/landmanpgh]

Not even close - it needed to make around $190M after marketing. And that movie had an ENORMOUS amount of marketing.

[u/landmanpgh → u/BrentonHenry2020]

Ah right I always forget about that. Still amazing it made anywhere near $100 million.

[u/TruthFlavor → u/landmanpgh]

The production company only gets around 50% of the box office the rest goes the theaters. Then there's taxes..and marketing..etc So, no not even close to breaking even.

[u/Fragrant_Ad5647 → u/BrentonHenry2020]

👆👆👆 don’t mistake an exception for the rule

[u/AggressiveNeck1095]

It mostly has to do with the likelihood of profit vs. expense and determining if there is enough of a theater paying audience to justify the gamble. Most musicals are a big loss at the box office.

[u/Accomplished_Wolf_89]

Musicals are crazy expensive to produce - which partially has to do with the way in which the musical numbers are edited. Gone are the days of Fred/Ginger where musical numbers are just two people in one location - now we expect the songs to be told via montage style. For example, onstage, the "What Is This Feeling" song from Wicked was just the two leads and ensemble in one location. In the movie, there were at least 3/4 locations (Elphaba/Glinda's room/Shiz courtyard/the classrooms) and a good ten scenes. Since, every individual shot takes a crazy long amount of time to set up (due to camera blocking, lighting, etc), its possible that Wicked spent a week filming JUST this song (regular dialogue scenes will ususually take an average amount of time to film). Then lets say because of labor costs, rentals, etc, prinicpal photography of Wicked cost about 10,000/per day. That means as a Producer, you'd be spending $60,000 on a single, three minute scene which test audiences could very well hate and ask to get cut

[u/Pandamio]

Musicals have a very niche audience. For the rest, they are very boring, pausing the action to repeatedly vocalizing feelings instead of acting them is a different king of narrative. Unless you are fond of it, it takes you out of the story. There's plenty of Indian films with plenty of musical segments. In their culture, its even expected. I find them old school and boring, most music tends to be too traditional, not to my liking. The only one i truly liked was Mulin Rouge, because it was postmodern, it was to musicals what Unforgiven was to the westerns. A new take, an evolution, therefore, more interesting and with a reason to be. Even when studios make a musical now, like Joker 2, they will try to hide it. Because they know fewer people will show up. Musicals work in broadway, were the live performances of talented dancers and singers LIVE, are great to enjoy and being impresse by.

[u/nizzernammer]

Ask the producers and executive producers of Joker 2.

[u/JayMoots]

Same reason there aren’t that many westerns any more. The genre has fallen out of fashion with both viewers and filmmakers. 

[u/eastside_coleslaw]

it is INSANELY hard to put a musical together. need really good music, really good story, really tight production team, a lot of freaking money, and insanely good execution

[u/ccsunmusic]

Musical is as old fashioned as classical music. No body writes classical music anymore, won't get paid, won't get performed. They just play the old ones already created.

[u/low_flying_aircraft]

They're just not in fashion, or popular enough. A lot of people think they're corny and lame. I personally love musicals, but I know from countless discussions with friends that I'm in the minority. 

For those saying it's hard and you need a huge budget, I would counter with John Carney.

He's made a number of very low budget original musicals which were fantastic. 

Sing Street, for example, is an absolutely wonderful film, funny, emotional, heartwarming, great songs, amazing performances, probably the best musical of recent years in my opinion, and had a budget of $4m 

You can do it cheaply. But generally speaking the market for musicals is not huge.

[u/SpeakerUnusual7501]

Just speaking honestly, because most people think they suck. The average person is not into musical movies. Too old-school and not enough action.