Analysis: Films Like The Greatest Showman Should Be Considered Trendsetters, Not Flukes

February 1, 2018

The Greatest Showmanâs box office life has almost mirrored that of a clichÃ© Broadway musical. Before release, no one believed in its dreams: an $84 million circus musical starring Hugh Jackman and Zac Efron that was mocked by the bullies on film Twitter. It even had its darkest moment when it debuted at #4 with just $8.8 million, a definite sign of a total bomb. But then the rallying moment, as the film defied the odds and just kind of stuck around at #4 (and, on one weekend, #5) for 5 weeks straight, each weekend making more than its opening. Now the filmâs soundtrack has reached #1 on the Billboard Top 100 albums, #1 on iTunes, and has over 200 million plays on Spotify. Two of the songs (âThis is Meâ and âRewrite the Starsâ) have been listened to over 50 million times each on Spotify (in comparison, the Spanish version of âRemember Meâ from Coco has been listened to 12 million times). The film has earned a Golden Globe for Best Song and an Academy Award nomination for the same song. And, of course, it has shockingly earned over $100 million domestically. It currently stands at $128.2 million, which makes it the 15th-highest-grossing musical of all time, and it will climb higher on that list. So yes, The Greatest Showman, the not-so-little, big budget, live action musical that could, certainly has, but is it really all that surprising? After all, just last year La La Land had a fabulous run to end with $151.1 million domestic and $446 million worldwide, although that had the added benefit of immense critical acclaim, plus was considered a novelty as tribute to classic musicals of the 50s and 60s. However, in my mind, once is a novelty, twice is a trend. Itâs perhaps notable that the same lyricists for La La Land (Benj Pasek and Justin Paul) wrote the lyrics for The Greatest Showman. Indeed, the entire affair seems to cement the 30-year-olds in direct competition with Lin-Manuel Miranda as the blockbuster kings of the musical art form. I canât deny that I also laughed off The Greatest Showman upon release, along with its desperate attempt to appeal to the teenage demographic. Then that same demo shrugged my and everyone elseâs comments off and saw the film in droves. A lot of the buzz and drive for the film has been teens and families, and it really shouldnât be surprising. Teens in general have often driven hit musicals past the point of the $300+ seats at Broadway and into the mainstream culture. It seems to be a habit for us to forget that there is a deep love for musicals in the culture, and then immediately we are reminded when one takes off. In the 90s it was Rent; in the 2000s it was Wicked, Avenue Q, and Glee; and in the 2010s it is Hamilton, La La Land, and now The Greatest Showman. Yet, despite decades upon decades of cultural touchstone musicals, every time one gains mainstream popularity, the media tends to dismiss it as a fad or surprise. Perhaps most interesting is the way that both La La Land and The Greatest Showman utilized the months of December and January to their advantage. Part of what makes this pairing so unique is both felt like they existed for Oscar grabs, appealing to the aging Academy with their tributes to the likes of Vincente Minnelli or Cecil B. DeMille. However, while La La Land hit with Academy voters and critics, Showman received middling reviews and didnât even earn seemingly home run nominations for the likes of costumes or art direction. Yet both ended up performing about the same, with the possibility that The Greatest Showman may well outpace La La Land domestically. The result is that itâs not the awards that mattered, itâs the subject matter. Part of what makes the The Greatest Showman so interesting is how unabashedly a musical it is, creating more of a belting musical score than the toned down, more emotional La La Land. No wonder itâs such a streaming music hit. The key to a December/January release is standing out from the crowd. This year, while a dozen or so heavy adult dramas vied for Oscar bumps, films like Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle and The Greatest Showman stood out as fun family fare and profited greatly. Musicals have often been placed in this sphere, but often animated ones. Take one of the biggest, Frozen, which opened in December to $67.3 million and closed with $400.7 million, a multiplier of 5.9x. Of course one could chalk that insane success up to being a Disney animated film, but remember how the original ads for Frozen, which focused on Olaf and the reindeer, were terribly received? Well, Disney wisely put the song âLet it Goâ on YouTube right before release and it became a massive hit, with the two official versions (one regular and one sing along) now scoring over 2 billion views. Then thereâs Moana, which opened in December to $56.6 million and closed with $248.7 million, a multiplier of 4.3x. That film felt like it would greatly underperform, as it had a 50% drop on its second weekend, but then some of its songs, like âHow Far Iâll Goâ and âYouâre Welcome,â started becoming popular and the film found its legs. But those multipliers are nothing compared to La La Land (16.3x) and The Greatest Showman (14.5x so far), which managed to basically repeat or top their opening weekends for months. December/January was great for these films but is there a possibility it could be more than just timing? Take a look, for instance, at Into the Woods, which also opened in December but had a much higher opening weekend than La La Land or The Greatest Showman with $31 million. However, it had a multiplier of 4x, ending with $128 million despite having more Oscar nominations than The Greatest Showman and overall better reviews. Into the Woods was already an established musical, perhaps not as well-remembered in 2014 as during its Broadway release in the 1980s, but still a well-established property. The same thing happened to Les Miserables (also released in December), another 1980s musical released in the 2010s, that opened to $27.2 million but had a multiplier of 5.4x, despite receiving a Best Picture nomination. This isnât to say that non-original-musicals are a problem. Excluding animated Disney films, 8 of the top 10 highest-grossing musicals domestically are adaptations of a Broadway show or a remake. But perhaps the appeal of an adaptation is much more front-loaded. It will be interesting to see how upcoming adaptations like Wicked (set for a December release in 2019) and Steven Spielbergâs remake of West Side Story will fare in that regard. This isnât to say this is a wake-up call for Hollywood to release musicals in December. Theyâve been doing that consistently for more than a decade. In fact, 6 of the last 10 holiday seasons has seen a release of a musical of some kind that has grossed over $100 million domestically. The real wakeup is that their reliance on well-known properties that have already been smash Broadway hits isnât necessary. Part of the problem with adapting Broadway shows is that rarely do the creators want to make a film version until the stage version has stopped having consistent popular runs. Wicked for instance is coming out 16 years after its Broadway debut and has been supplanted many times over as the âitâ musical of the moment. The value of an original film musical is it becomes the âitâ musical right away, and the studio owns it all. Fox doesnât have to share the bounty of the album sales, the box office, and the merchandise, with anyone but Fox and all the rights-holders therein. Itâs frustrating that both La La Land and The Greatest Showman had to be fought over desperately to get made. Damien Chazelle wanted to make La La Land right out of college, but had to first become one of the youngest best director nominees for Whiplash to get the funding. It took Hugh Jackman almost two decades of consistent A-list stardom to get his dream project made. And now both are huge smash hits that are planning Broadway runs. The real wakeup call here is that there is a very hungry market out there for more than just old musicals finally brought to screen. It will probably be a good 15+ years before Hamilton can reasonably be made for the big screen and by then those teens in love with it will be adults and the next generation will have moved on to the next big musical. Hollywood needs to stop being so risk averse to these kinds of original live action musicals and starting funding them regularly. Itâs a market just waiting for them, and their response, like for so many other genres, is hesitancy and fear. M.I. Barish

Filed under: Analysis, The Greatest Showman, Coco, La La Land, Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, Zac Efron, Hugh Jackman, Damien Chazelle, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Benj Pasek