Does this mean that Hollywood has finally figured out how to transfer stage musicals to the screen with their magic intact?
Ten Oscar nominations, including nods for its two stars. Widespread critical acclaim. A staggering box office take of more than $720 million so far, dislodging “Mamma Mia!” as the highest-grossing film based on a Broadway musical of all time.
“Wicked” traveled a long and winding (though not yellow brick) road to the big screen, but now that it’s finally arrived, the Broadway blockbuster is taking the movie industry by storm.
The overwhelming success of “Wicked” may suggest the answer is yes. But a more prudent course is to stick with “maybe.”
Whether measured by artistic achievement or box-office returns, stage-to-screen musicals have historically yielded more misses than hits. Combining two related but distinct art forms is a tricky proposition, requiring a certain alchemy. (“Emilia Pérez,” which leads all Oscar nominations, was adapted by director Jacques Audiard from his opera libretto, but has no long Broadway history to overcome.)
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Some of the most highly regarded Broadway musicals of the last 50 years — “A Chorus Line,” “Evita,” “The Wiz,” “Rent,” “The Producers,” to name a few — were unable to meet that challenge. Devoid of the electricity generated by live performance, they proved to be disappointments on the big screen.
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Then we have to consider the inherent artificiality of a musical. In the real world, who bursts into song and dance mid-sentence? That kind of incongruity is more conspicuous onscreen than it is on the stage, which can make it harder for audiences to achieve the proverbial suspension of disbelief.
Meanwhile, from a marketing standpoint, stage-born movie musicals can be a hard sell, forced to rely on a message that boils down to: “It’s the same, but different.” That said, it’s worth noting that even the most popular stage production draws an audience that is a fraction of what a movie makes.
The film version of “Wicked” works as well as it does because the creative team, including director Jon M. Chu, trusted the power of the source material. Indeed, their fidelity to that material was one of the reasons for the long delay — and one of the reasons they ultimately decided to release “Wicked” in two installments.
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Stephen Schwartz composed a wonderful score, and “Wicked” has a pair of electrifying performers, Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande, to sing it. But it’s the musical’s focus on female friendship that matters most.
That bond is forged, in the case of Erivo’s Elphaba and Grande’s Glinda, between two very different people. Their friendship stands as a bulwark of solidarity, enabling them to navigate a hostile and confusing world. Many girls and women can relate.
Yet capturing the essence of their stage progenitors was not enough to save several other high-profile movie musicals from box-office failure.
Mike Faist, center, plays the temperamental and resentful leader of the Jets gang in “West Side Story.” 20th Century Studios
The roster of flops includes Lin-Manuel Miranda’s “In the Heights,” directed by “Wicked”’s Chu; Steven Spielberg’s remake of “West Side Story,” with a revised book by Tony Kushner, who has demonstrated proficiency on the stage (“Angels in America”) and the screen (“Lincoln”); and the Miranda-directed “Tick, Tick … Boom!”, an autobiographical musical by “Rent” composer Jonathan Larson, who died at 35 just before the musical opened.
From an artistic standpoint, all three films were first-rate; from a commercial standpoint, all of them were busts, confirming, once again, the truth of screenwriter William Goldman’s oft-quoted adage about moviemaking: “Nobody knows anything.”
With that bleak history in mind, here are a few Do’s and Don’ts for anyone who hopes to orchestrate a transfer from Broadway to the big screen.
Do make sure the musical has something to say to today’s audiences. The slide into fascism depicted in “Wicked” is looking more and more relevant every day, isn’t it?
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Don’t automatically cast A-listers, especially if they can’t sing. This should be self-evident, but it apparently isn’t. Singing, not acting, is the key skill in a musical. It is in song, not dialogue, that the characters in a musical tell us who they are and what they want. Relationships solidify or evaporate in song; the narrative is pushed forward or stopped in its tracks by song.
But too often producers, directors, and studios reflexively offer major roles to big stars despite their lack of vocal chops. The result is the toneless squawking of, say, Russell Crowe as Inspector Javert in “Les Miserables”; or Pierce Brosnan assaulting our eardrums in “Mamma Mia!” as a man who learns he may have a hitherto unknown daughter; or Elizabeth Taylor’s valiant but hapless attempt to sing “Send in the Clowns” as actress Desiree Armfeldt in the film adaptation of Stephen Sondheim’s “A Little Night Music.”
Then there’s “The Prom,” which was a quirky little charmer on Broadway. But its charms faded when it was retooled as a clunky star vehicle (Meryl Streep, Kerry Washington, Nicole Kidman, James Corden, Keegan-Michael Key) in a film version.
Don’t be tethered to the stage version. Take advantage of the tools that film has to offer, such as close-ups and exteriors and lavish production design. Stephen Sondheim was a great admirer of Tim Burton’s film version of Sondheim’s masterwork, “Sweeney Todd,” which starred Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter.
Don’t get carried away, however. On Broadway, “Matilda” was one of the best musicals I’ve ever seen, but its manic, over-produced film version was exhausting to watch. Story and character can get lost amid all the bells and whistles. Remember that the best movie musicals are defined by a certain intimacy.
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Do be open to the possibilities of “live capture” films. These filmed versions of live stage productions might serve as a way for theater- and moviemakers to have their cake and eat it, too.
Later this month three performances of “Hadestown” — a Tony-winning musical that was the brainchild of singer-songwriter Anaïs Mitchell, who grew up on a farm in Vermont — will be filmed live in London’s West End. The five original leads from the Broadway production were recently reassembled for the London staging. Later, presumably, the live-capture version will be available on video.
The most prominent example of live-capture is, inevitably, “Hamilton.” A June 2016 performance of Miranda’s mega-hit in the Richard Rodgers Theatre — featuring the original Broadway cast, including Miranda in the title role — was recorded. Then it streamed four years later on Disney Plus, when COVID-19 had forced millions to hunker down at home.
For theatergoers frustrated by the fact that tickets to “Hamilton” had been nearly impossible to get, the live-capture “Hamilton” was a chance to see what all the fuss was about. For Disney, the live-capture ”Hamilton” drew attention to a streaming platform that was then less than a year old and building its brand.
Don’t shilly-shally. If you want to make a movie drawn from a stage musical, just get it done. From its 1979 Broadway premiere on, “Evita” was talked about as a possible movie, with Barbra Streisand in the title role, or Streep, or Michelle Pfeiffer. Patti Lupone, who launched her storied career with an electrifying performance as Eva Perón, was not considered famous enough to play Eva in a movie.
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Nearly two decades passed before the movie got made, and it ended up starring none of the above. The role went instead to Madonna, whose portrayal of Eva merely skimmed the surface, offering few indications of the complicated inner life churning beneath that surface.
Quite a comedown from what Streisand & Co. would doubtless have done on the big screen — and what LuPone did do, all those years ago, upon a stage.
Don Aucoin can be reached at donald.aucoin@globe.com. Follow him @GlobeAucoin.