Wicked has released its first full official trailer, offering an extended look at the world of Oz and with Cynthia Erivo hitting the insane high notes of 'Defying Gravity'.
The hit song plays in the background in the trailer, with its familiar tune meant to make fans giddy with excitement. However, at no point does it show Elphaba singing it – or the rest of the cast engaged in any of the many musical numbers the movie will include.
If this weren't one of the most famous stage musicals of all time, we might not think it was a musical at all, but rather a colourful prequel to The Wizard of Oz.
This new Wicked trailer downplays its stage origins, and that's nothing new — in the last few years, Hollywood has been hiding its musicals even when it's glaringly obvious they are, indeed, full to the brim with songs.
This shift in marketing strategy became crystal clear last year when the trailers for the new adaptations of Mean Girls and The Color Purple were released.
Both of them were originally known by audiences as non-musical stories, the former a 2004 teen comedy starring Lindsay Lohan, and the latter as Steven Spielberg's 1985 adaptation of Alice Walker's book. These new productions were direct adaptations of their respective stage musicals, however, a fact that wasn't clear at all in the trailers.
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The Color Purple was branded as "a bold new take on the beloved classic", without specifying that the new take was indeed musical-based. Mean Girls focused its marketing efforts on passing the baton to the next generation, saying, "This isn’t your mother's Mean Girls", and using non-original songs like Olivia Rodrigo's 'Get Him Back!'.
Even if viewers could find out these were indeed musicals with a simple Google search, their official trailers tried to hide it as much as possible.
The same happened with Wonka, a prequel to Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory starring Timothée Chalamet, which was released last Christmas.
Despite featuring original songs and several dance numbers, the trailers decided to leave all musical content out. Even director Paul King insisted that it's "more like a movie with songs than a musical".
By the way, did you know Adam Sandler's Netflix animated movie Leo is a musical? And the streamer's French movie Miraculous: Ladybug & Cat Noir, the Movie, too? Probably not, as they were not marketed as such, setting viewers up for a surprise.
Obviously, there's only so much you can include in a two-minute teaser of a movie, and it can be tricky to include more than one musical tune in the mix, but why is Hollywood underselling its musicals?
It's easy: They don't think people like musicals that much, based on some recent (and painful) box-office flops.
From the grotesque spectacle Cats offered in 2019 to 2021's devastating run of low-grossing musicals (Steven Spielberg's West Side Story, Dear Evan Hansen, In the Heights, and Everybody's Talking About Jamie), Hollywood thinks there is a lesson to be learned about marketing musicals too openly as... well, musicals.
"Apparently, test-audience focus groups generally hate musicals, and the only way to get people into the theatre with one is to trick 'em. If they get in the door and wind up enjoying themselves, then business is solid for a studio on a musical," revealed Deadline last December.
The industry's lack of trust in audiences enjoying musicals feels misplaced, given that many of the earlier mentioned flops happened during the pandemic (a period where movies of all genres flopped mercilessly), and highly musical movies like Barbie and The Little Mermaid produced fantastic box-office results last year.
Besides, who are they trying to fool? Sure, they might get some clueless people to buy tickets not knowing what they're getting into, but the happy surprise won't be happy at all.
Abigail actor Melissa Barrera said as much in a recent interview with IndieWire.
"I feel weird about it, I’m not going to lie, I feel weird about this rejection to musicals, because before, every movie was a musical and [audiences] loved them and they were great, and I don’t know what happened that the tide turned and there's this rejection," said Barrera, who starred in 2021's musical In The Heights, by Wicked director John M Chu.
Pointing at the upcoming Joker sequel, Joker: Folie à Deux, the actor criticised this new practice of hiding musicals for marketing purposes.
"They're trying so hard to say that it's not a musical when, dude, it is. Come on! We already know how many songs there are in the movie. It's a musical, so this fear, like the trailer is not including any songs and stuff like that… I think also audiences reject the idea of feeling manipulated, and so I think that makes it worse.
"They release a trailer where there's no music, and you're like, 'What is that? What even is that?' and then they release the last trailer a week before it comes out, and then they have music in it, and everyone's confused."
It's still too early to say if Wicked's marketing campaign will honour its stage-musical legacy further on or continue to follow this weird trend instead.
Despite being a highly renowned musical, it has never been adapted on-screen before, and many viewers around the world (particularly those with no access to the stage musical in their home cities) could be unaware of what the story is about.
However, to continue to hide the evidence in plain sight would be a disservice to those same audiences who are ready to defy gravity for the first time.
Wicked is released in cinemas on November 27.
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Mireia (she/her) has been working as a movie and TV journalist for over eight years. Based in the UK, she is a former deputy movies editor at Digital Spy, and previously worked for the Spanish magazine Fotogramas. Mireia's work has been published in other outlets such as Esquire and Elle in Spain, and WeLoveCinema and GamesRadar+ in the UK. She is also a published author, having written the essay Biblioteca Studio Ghibli: Nicky, la aprendiz de bruja about Hayao Miyazaki's Kiki's Delivery Service.
During her years as a freelance journalist and film critic, Mireia has covered festivals around the world and has interviewed high-profile talents such as Kristen Stewart, Ryan Gosling, Jake Gyllenhaal and many more. She's also taken part in juries such as the FIPRESCI jury at Venice Film Festival and the short film jury at Kingston International Film Festival in London. LinkedIn
