Why Doesn’t Hollywood Sing?

Melophobia is the fear of music. There is no name that I know of for a fear of musical theatre, but it’s clear that Hollywood has developed one. Big-budget musicals used to be huge, and these days you’re much more likely to hear that something Isn’t Really A Musical or to wait literal decades for an adaptation of a show that’s made millions on Broadway. It’s a curious phenomenon, and it’s impossible to blame any of the usual suspects of What’s Wrong In Hollywood for it. Broadway musicals are existing IP, after all, and if you’re particularly desperate, surely there would be an audience of some sort for a Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark musical, right?

The book musical is considered to have begun with Oklahoma! The show debuted on Broadway on March 31, 1943. The movie debuted in its roadshow version on October 11, 1955. It would be nominated for four Oscars, winning two—including Scoring of a Musical Picture, a category we’ll be getting back to. The musical Wicked premiered in San Francisco on May 28, 2003, and was on Broadway officially on October 30. The movie debuted in Sydney on November 3, 2024. It would be nominated for ten Oscars, winning two—losing for score to The Brutalist. I do not believe anyone wrote a “let’s get nominated for an Oscar” song for it, though I haven’t seen it yet.

But let’s be clear; Wicked didn’t need my money. It grossed over $750 million worldwide, including from people who saw it repeatedly. Depending on your terms, it is the highest, second-highest, or tenth-highest grossing musical of all time. (Depending on if we count Bohemian Rhapsody and assorted Disney movies, including remakes, or not.) The second one will doubtless also gross quite a lot, and I wouldn’t be surprised if there were releases of both movies together that pushes that gross even higher.

Now, it’s true that Joker Two: Joker Boogaloo did not exactly do as well. But from what I’m given to understand, it’s not the music that’s the problem there. Never mind that it looks like there’s only one original song in it; there’s nothing wrong with that. Singin’ in the Rain is arguably a jukebox musical, after all. But it seems that Hollywood has decided that the deserved failure of bad musicals is an indictment of musicals as a genre, and it runs away from them.

But it seems that Hollywood has decided that the deserved failure of bad musicals is an indictment of musicals as a genre, and it runs away from them.

It can’t even be said that Wicked is an anomaly. Ignoring those Disney movies as we’ll continue to do, there was still Bohemian Rhapsody. Or, if you don’t want to talk about that, how about The Greatest Showman? I haven’t seen that, either, given my knowledge about P. T. Barnum, but still. Wonka, also by all accounts bad, grossed a surprising amount. There’s Mamma Mia! Les Misérables. La La Land, if you want to count that. All of these are off the IMDb list of the highest-grossing musicals of all time.

Now, it’s probably not adjusted for inflation. I can’t imagine The Sound of Music shouldn’t be up there. But that’s the thing. The Sound of Music debuted in 1959 and the movie version debuted in 1965. That’s seven years, shorter than Oklahoma!, and there are plenty of famous musicals from that era with even shorter turnaround. I’m not here to defend Cats—I don’t even like the stage version—but it is a curious fact that it took three years for Jesus Christ Superstar to go from a concept album to a stage show to a movie, and it took thirty-eight for Cats to go from the West End to the big screen.

This is actually my second take on this article—my computer ate the first one, and I cried and took last Wednesday off—and the first time through, I did a ton of analysis on the years of all these things. Thirty-two years for Les Misérables versus five for The King and I. Eighteen for The Phantom of the Opera versus nine for South Pacific. Twenty-seven for Chicago versus five for Kiss Me, Kate. It’s very strange, especially as tickets to musicals have gotten more expensive and people might really like to go see the show they’ve been listening to for years.

Then there’s the “it’s not really a musical” marketing, where the music is hidden in advertising for things like Mean Girls. This isn’t even my irritation at the idea that Sweeney Todd needed to lose the Ballad because that made it “too theatrical.” This is just flat-out hiding the idea that the movie has people singing in it. I’m pretty sure even La La Land did that, and what is it if not a musical?

Look, I’ve come to terms with the fact that I’m never getting a movie adaptation of Assassins. I get it. That’s a big ask. It’s fair. But why did it take twenty-eight years to get Into the Woods? (Let’s not talk about how bad it was when it did get made.) For years, musicals were so popular that there was an actual score category for them. Some, even most, were original. But the Broadway-to-Hollywood pipeline was real and wasn’t slow. I don’t know why that’s changed. It’s not as though the audience isn’t there.