Mean Girls: Executive reveals reason for omitting musical aspect in marketing

Mean Girls: Executive reveals reason for omitting musical aspect in marketing – Studio officials say that the public is not the most receptive when they know that a film belongs to that genre.

By Megan Sauer

Although musical cinema is a very complicated art that seeks to combine two languages to complement each other, not all audiences have the sensitivity to appreciate the effort.

That is very clear to Paramount executives, who most recently released a film of that genre, Mean Girls, and they chose to try to omit, almost completely, the fact in order to appeal to a broader audience.

In an interview with Variety, Marc Winstock, president of global marketing at Paramount, was questioned about the discretion with which the Mean Girls trailer treated the film’s musical element.

The adaptation, which is a film version of the Broadway staging of the classic 2000s feature film, was one of three projects of the genre that sought to “take care” that the public did not know from the outset that that was what it was about. This is the executive’s reason:

Why was it hidden that Mean Girls (2024) was a musical?

“We didn’t want to run out and say it was a musical because people tend to treat musicals differently. This movie is a comedy with music. Yes, it could be considered a musical, but it appeals to a larger audience. You can see in [the trailers for] Wonka and The Color Purple that they don’t claim to be musicals either. We have a note in the title, so there are clues without it being obvious.”

Are musicals really a way to scare audiences? It all depends on the music and the talent in question if we are observers. For example, Bohemian Rhapsody: The Story of Freddie Mercury, a musical biography of the band Queen, grossed US$910 million worldwide.

But even without having the catalog of such a popular group, Wonka -85% , featuring Timothée Chalamet , has sold almost half that number since its release in December.

That discretion that characterized Mean Girls was also one that existed in the trailers for Wonka.

The strategy seems, more or less, to have worked for that first title, since in its first weekend it already has $32 million.

Although the cast is not as well-known as the other one with the Oscar-nominated actor, and that could work against it, the correlation between the audience that follows the original film and that of the musicals could not be so far away.

They will reveal it to us in the coming weeks.

Although reviews were not particularly enthusiastic about this adaptation, the fact that Mean Girls is a classic will undoubtedly guarantee it a certain audience.

Likewise, it is worth remembering that even original musicals, which are increasingly rare, find their audience when the stars align. Perhaps the most recent case was La La Land: A Love Story, with Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone.

So it will be in the hands of the public.

Mean Girls, which was originally going to be released directly on streaming, is already in theaters and will also serve to test the market for comedies led by a female cast after the Barbie furor.

As for musicals, in Latin America there is still no date for The Color Purple, despite the fact that it has made it to some awards season ceremonies, so lovers of the genre will have to be more patient until they have news about its release.