In a very strange year for movies, the failure of Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story is perhaps the most head-scratching development of all. The remake of the beloved 1961 musical grossed just $10m on its opening weekend, and while the film could certainly improve upon its lackluster debut over the holidays, it caps a year of disappointments for fans of the movie musical. In the Heights kicked off the summer with poor ticket sales and accusations of colorism for failing to have enough Afro-Latino actors in its cast. Dear Evan Hansen created the rare consensus of the year, hated by critics and audiences alike, and endured prolonged mockery on social media for its casting of the crow’s-footed Ben Platt as its teenaged protagonist. The less said about Diana: The Musical, a filmed version of the Broadway bomb that made its way to Netflix, the better.
At least people seemed to like Tick, Tick… Boom!, the Lin-Manuel Miranda-directed adaptation of a work by the late Jonathan Larson, although we don’t really know how many – Netflix continues to be cagey about viewing numbers, and the film had only a nominal release in theaters. All in all, it was a catastrophic year for a genre that has been a mainstay of cinema since the advent of talkies. Historically, movie musicals have been an opportunity to highlight the best of the theatrical experience: these are films with big budgets, melodramatic plots that play well on the big screen, and expansive dance numbers, and they just don’t play as well at home, no matter how big your flatscreen or how expensive your sound system.
Studio executives and box-office pundits expected audiences to show up for In the Heights, Dear Evan Hansen and West Side Story, and not just fans of the movie musical but general audiences, as well. After a year without movies, audiences would crave the spectacle. It didn’t happen. Viewers showed up for other movies. They showed up for superhero movies such as Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings and Venom: Let There Be Carnage. They showed up for horror movies like A Quiet Place Part II. And they showed up for corporate bland-fests Free Guy and Jungle Cruise, which are already on their way to being money-making franchises for Disney. The pattern is damningly clear: each of the year’s 10 highest-grossing movies is either part of a long-running franchise or the beginning of one.
It’s too early to say if the movie musical needs a doctor or a coroner, but what is clear is that studio executives wildly overestimate how popular this genre is. People who love musicals really, really love musicals, and every time one of them hits at the box-office, a series of enthusiastic imitators tends to follow. When Chicago won best picture at the 2001 Oscars, it opened the floodgates for the genre’s revival (after basically being absent from theaters for two decades). The results have been spotty at best. For every The Greatest Showman or Les Misérables, both of which were huge hits, there were several like Nine, Rock of Ages, The Prom, or, worst-case scenario, Cats. The success rate for the movie musical is simply not very good, and given that they typically require large budgets to support the spectacle, it’s a risky proposition.
The disappointing returns from this year’s crop of movie musicals may also indicate a Covid-led acceleration of a long-simmering dynamic. For a great many moviegoers, there are now two kinds of movies: those you go to the theater for and those you are happy to watch at home a few weeks later. It seems that that theater is the place for big-budget serialized storytelling with major movie stars. Superhero movies, yes, but also the Fast and Furious franchise and James Bond. Vin Diesel, The Rock and Daniel Craig still have faces that mean more to us up on the big screen. For all they had to offer, neither In the Heights nor Dear Evan Hansen and West Side Story featured a major movie star, and there’s some hubris in the assumption that audiences would turn out for these casts filled with actors they had never heard of before. West Side Story did have Ansel Elgort onboard as Tony, but after he was accused of sexual assault, the distributors were forced to downplay his presence in the film’s marketing (Elgort has maintained that it was consensual).
There is still time, however, for the genre to make a comeback. Tick, Tick… Boom! may be nominated for a few Oscars, which would raise its profile significantly, while West Side Story is still considered the frontrunner for best picture. It will probably stay in theaters at least until the Academy Awards happen in March, which will give it plenty of time to increase its box-office haul. Still to be released this year is Cyrano, starring Peter Dinklage as the lovelorn poet, and featuring songs by the National. It’s unlikely to be a hit, but like the others mentioned, it could make an impression on awards voters.
Perhaps that’s where the musical has landed: as Oscar bait. With the hegemony of franchise film-making, any genre of film that deals with serious subject matter or is designed with adults in mind has already been relegated to the last few months of the year. King Richard, Being the Ricardos and Belfast were all made with Oscars in mind, and if they miss out on nominations, they will probably be considered failures. Movie musicals were once apart from that. They won Oscars, but they were also beloved by the general moviegoing public. Unless something changes dramatically in the next two months, those days may be over, and 2021 may be remembered as the year the movie musical took its last bow.