It seems like people really do want to see movie musicals after all

Hollywood (or at least Hollywood’s various marketing firms) seems to have forgotten an old adage: the show must go on. There are always going to be new musicals. There are always going to be directors who want to turn those new musicals into movies. There are always going to be people who really want to watch those musical movies, despite the fact that studios seem to think audiences would rather be surprised with a choreographed opening number than understand that the movie they’re about to see is a musical in the first place.

In recent months, we’ve found ourselves commenting again and again on a pretty baffling trend in movie marketing: musical movies are simply not being advertised as musicals. You’d never know Karen sings a song about sexy corn (or anything else) in the new Mean Girls adaptation, and we didn’t get to hear Timothée Chalamet’s “beautiful singing voice” that reminded Wonka’s director of Bing Crosby until the film actually premiered. Even The Color Purple’s trailer only featured a few vocal clips here and there.

“If you spell out the word musical, people have pre-formed opinions. Musical has a connotation that [characters] are going to sing every word, and audiences can be turned off,” one marketing exec told The Hollywood Reporter. But people have not been turned off. People, in fact, seem to have more of a song in their hearts than, if not ever, at least than they have in a while.

This Christmas, The Color Purple won big at the box office. Despite a projected gross of somewhere between $8 million and $13 million (per Forbes), the film actually brought in $18 million on its opening day, outpacing not only fellow premieres Ferrari and The Boys In The Boat, but also major, family-friendly titles like Aquaman And The Lost Kingdom, Wonka, and Migration. The Color Purple is now the second most successful Christmas day premiere of all time, second only to 2009's Sherlock Holmes. That also puts it ahead of other successful musical openings in years past, including 2012's Les Misérables, 2014's Into The Woods, and, yes, 2019's Cats.

But it’s not just the Fantasia Barrino-starring film that’s seeing such massive returns. Wonka opened to a sweet $39 million and has already made $89 million domestically, a cool chunk of its $125 million budget. Songs from its soundtrack have already reached a million streams on YouTube. Both films are certified hits.

This resurgent interest in musicals could be the result of a whole chorus of things. Wonka has mostly original music, for example, which in this era of franchise fatigue holds a little extra luster. The Color Purple, conversely, is a new take on a beloved story that many may have missed during its relatively short Broadway runs. Maybe people have managed to selectively forget Dear Evan Hansen. Maybe the bizarre marketing tactic is actually working. It’s hard to know for sure. But with exciting offerings like Mean Girls and Wicked still on the horizon, one thing is clear: it’s an exciting time to be a theater kid. Maybe after this run, Hollywood will finally give the movie musical the ovation it deserves.