Director Bill Condon is one of the most influential filmmakers of musicals in the 21st century, having written the script for the Best Picture winner Chicago and directed hit musical films, including 2006’s Dreamgirls and 2017’s Beauty and the Beast. His latest project is Kiss of the Spider Woman, based on the musical of the same name, which itself was adapted from a 1972 book. He is, in other words, more than well-qualified to weigh in on the genre life cycle of movie musicals and Hollywood’s current aversion to the genre.
Speaking with The Hollywood Reporter, Condon looked back on how movie musicals have always had a difficult time. Arguing that they’ve “been on their deathbed since about 18 months after they arrived with The Jazz Singer,” he continued, “By 1929, there were so many musical movies that people were like, ‘Enough!’ And they would cut numbers out of musicals. And then in this century, it’s always like there’s a burst with Moulin Rouge! and Chicago, Dreamgirls.” As he sees it, every musical seems to carry the weight of the entire genre’s future. “Unfortunately, every movie has to carry the burden of the genre on its back, so that when you have three or four movies that don’t work commercially, suddenly it’s like, ‘No, we don’t want musicals.'”
Condon also spoke about how, despite the box office successes of movies like Wicked, studios and streamers are still hesitant to pull the trigger on musicals:
“There’s a specific issue these days with the streamers. I talk to friends at Netflix, and one of their most important metrics is retention. And they have found with musicals that when that first number comes along, there’s just a chunk of the audience that moves on. They committed themselves to making musicals a few years ago, and it’s anathema for them now. Some of the biggest financiers have no interest in musicals right now. So I think they’ll always struggle. I thought Beauty and the Beast was such a success in those early Disney adaptations. And Wicked is obviously such a phenomenon. But unfortunately, I think, people always credit that to the IP more than the actual appetite for musicals.”
What Musicals and Superhero Movies Have in Common
Condon’s comments about how “when the first number comes along, there’s just a chunk of the audience that moves on” explain why so many movies hide their musical roots in their marketing campaigns. Most recently, The Color Purple, Wonka, Mean Girls, and Wicked downplayed their musical elements in the trailers. While the intention appears to be getting audiences in the door, it’s likely to frustrate and anger some viewers. While audiences are more willing to accept animated movies being musicals, as was lately proven all over again by the breakout hit KPop Demon Hunters, live-action musicals have a greater obstacle to clear for audiences to suspend their disbelief.
Movie musicals have had an interesting decade. Following La La Land and The Greatest Showman, Disney’s live-action remakes, such as Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin, were musicals that became billion-dollar hits. Yet Cats‘ bombing right before theaters shut down due to the COVID-19 pandemic seemed to set off a domino effect of disappointments. 2021 was marked by a surge in movie musicals, including In the Heights, Dear Evan Hansen, and West Side Story, which underperformed at the box office. However, In the Heights and West Side Story at least received positive reviews. Encanto disappointed at the box office, but its music blew up once the film landed on Disney+, while Netflix’s Tick Tick…Boom! performed well with viewers, but its success is hard to gauge without a stable metric.
In 2021, many wrote off musicals the same way that the superhero movie genre has been written off recently, though superheroes are still raking in hundreds of millions of dollars at the box office. Receipts for Wicked and the anticipation for its sequel, Wicked for Good, should have shown that, for the right musical, audiences will show up. Maybe it’s just time to stop making sweeping statements about genres, since it’s been shown that once they seem to be done, they always come back.
- Release Date
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October 10, 2025
- Runtime
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128 minutes
- Director
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Bill Condon
- Writers
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Bill Condon, Terrence McNally, Manuel Puig
- Producers
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Barry Josephson, Ben Affleck, Benny Medina, Diego Luna, Elaine Goldsmith-Thomas, Jennifer Lopez, Kevin Halloran, Matt Damon, Sam Weisman, Greg Yolen, Michael Joe, Tom Kirdahy, Pamela Thur, Dani Bernfeld
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Tonatiuh Elizarraraz
Luis Molina
