The Next La La Land?
Monday, January 16, 2017 at 9:30AM Manuel here catching us up on a project that is primed to be billed as "The next La La Land." Not only is Michael Gracey's upcoming musical The Great Showman scheduled for release next Christmas (just in time for the holidays and awards season) but it features music by La La Land duo Benj Pasek & Justin Paul, who'll soon no doubt be credited with single-handedly bringing the original movie musical back to life.
Focused on the life of P.T. Barnum, the film has suffered through a long development period but is finally shooting here in New York...
The Great Showman stars Hugh Jackman, Zac Efron, Michelle Williams, and Zendaya, who was just last month spotted in Brooklyn shooting the film.
I'd somehow forgotten about the film yet Zac and Hugh have really stepped up their social media game these past few months so I figured we should take this time to enjoy their bromantic affair and mainly just gawk at their pics from the set of the film:
Over here, we're glad Efron is finally headed back to where he belongs (musicals!) and curious to see what Michelle can do with a plum musical role (one originally intended for Ms Anne Hathaway) but we're mostly looking forward to Jackman having some fun in a musical role (no Le Mis brooding here, we hope!) What say you?
Reader Comments (25)
This is going to be odd. Barnum and Bailey won't exist anymore at the time of the movie's release, so that'll definitely impact how this movie is received, and might impact how it's edited and colour graded (I'd bet we'll see slower editing and a moodier colour grade than we would have if Barnum and Bailey were still open), once shooting ends.
What about John Carney?? Three gems: Once, Begin Again, Sing Street. Three originals and fantastic music. Sheez, the Hollywood hype machine is indeed unbeatable.
I hope Jackman and Efron are sleeping together. :drool:
Williams will kill this role.
Moulin Rouge brought back the musical. It needs to be said and repeated. It was received with doubt and harsh criticism bordering on downright mockery but it was a pure musical through and through with incredible spectacle and fervent fans. That is what a comeback feels like.
I think it could be a big splashy show and it's nice to see Zac Efron in something decent as opposed to the trash he'd been mired in for a while now but surely it will have a bit of melancholy attached with the shuttering of Barnum & Bailey circus after 145 years. Still Hugh, Michelle and Zac will be enough to get me there.
I don't know what the tone will be like, but if it's supposed to be fun, I hope Williams can loosen up and let herself have fun with it. I love her in dramas but I sometimes find her to be lacking charisma.
But yeah, looking forward to another original movie musical!
La La Land's critic fans spent so much time defending a movie that didn't need to be defended. I saw a poster yesterday that just runs Peter Travers' review in full—the closing paragraph is dedicated to the movie's haters. Why do we keep treating La La Land like some sort of longsuffering, put-upon, misunderstood underdog? It's like making time to assure the prom queen that she's pretty and popular.
As a result, all we're talking about (and have talked about, and will talk about) is La La Land, a movie that was probably coasting to a Best Picture win anyway. And on the chopping block are 20th Century Women, Jackie, etc. And we act shocked—shocked!—that there hasn't been enough oxygen in the conversation to support these movies.
I don't know what the tone will be like, but if it's supposed to be fun, I hope Williams can loosen up and let herself have fun with it. I love her in dramas but I sometimes find her to be lacking charisma.
Some actresses are actually actors who don't play to the gender expectation of perkiness and selling themselves as tarts who are smarter than they look.
I'm with Hayden.
Yes, god forbid we talk about a film that a lot of people are loving, critics and audiences, that won a record breaking number of Golden Globe awards just a week ago and doing gangbusters at the box office.
Ryan, your point proves mine. I'm tired of hearing about imaginary La La Land haters who—mysteriously—don't write reviews or go to the movies or vote for film awards. So that Chazelle can give victory speeches about triumphing over "cynics."
It's sort of a brilliant campaign ploy, inventing a backlash that doesn't exist. I'm sure we'll see it again.
Hayden: Look, I don't HATE La La Land. Its great aspects are ABSOLUTELY worth championing. All of the no dialogue scenes are pretty great. But it also has a couple massive weaknesses, most consistently among them Damien Chazelle being REALLY BAD at romantic banter, but that Ryan Gosling explains jazz scene also reads as ill-advised, and I have to say it: The original version/central duo of La La Land would have been INSUFFERABLE. Emma Watson probably would have been okay, but Miles Teller, even at his two peaks (Rabbit Hole and Whiplash), isn't THAT good of an actor to begin with (the only reason he even worked in Whiplash is because that movie is, subtextually, about a good actor slapping a bad actor and anyone who doesn't think that is lying to themselves), probably would have been a worse singer than Gosling (would NOT be surprised if he turned out to be Crowe/Brosnan level) and DEFINITELY wouldn't have been able to "decrease the punchable factor" on a lot of the worst lines of dialogue like Gosling manages to. That having been said: Gosling should still be nominated for The Nice Guys over this. That movie actually gave him material to work WITH, not against, and he was gangbusters, elevating dialogue and events that were already very good on the page.
I have a friend who worked on the movie, and he said Jackman is awesome to work with
Oscar 2018 - leading actor:
Gary Oldman vs Hugh Jackman vs Mark Rylance vs DDL
The Darkest Hour vs The Greateast Showman vs Edgardo Mortara vs PTA fashion film
Let:s started the fight!!! 😎👊👊♥
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I really want to see The Greateast Showman. Jackman + Efron + Williams + Ferguson + Song writers of La La Land + MICHAEL ARDNT on the screenplay + period Film = *-* + ♥ + 👏
@ Jon
Did you just announce DDL's fourth Oscar?
@ Hayden
La La Land is #11 on my Best of 2016 list, so I clearly didn't hate it. And of course, people are going to be talking about, writing about and gushing about it. So where exactly is this backlash people keep wringing their hands over? I'm not seeing it either. (I'm going to steal "It's like making time to assure the prom queen that she's pretty and popular," thankyouverymuch.)
@Paul
I don't know because right now my heart is with the Idea of seen Gary Oldman best actor, Glenn Close or Michelle Pfeiffer best actress.
I don't wanna spoil my couple dream of been named king and queen of 2017.
It looks like fun and Hugh and Zac make a cute couple
Jon: 1. A bit too soon for Rylance #2, if that ever happens. 2. I doubt Gary Oldman will ever happen as a winner. Even obvious nominations that, if the Academy were genuinely into him, would have happened (JFK and The Contender, most notably), didn't. Honestly, Tinker Tailor is probably a done in one "we nominated him, okay? Happy?" moment. Hugh Jackman v. DDL win #4? That sounds like a title match.
Tony T, I guess you can credit Moulin Rouge like now Manuel does BP and JP if you completely ingnore what Disney did and is still doing for musicals.
I tink Williams is playing the famous opera singer, Jenny Lind, The Swedish Nightingale .
Efron i dunno whol
Will this win Michelle Williams her musical? We all know how much they love their women in supporting musical roles!
barnum & bailey get the last laugh; suck on that, ringling brothers!
@Hayden and Paul Outlaw - but there ARE people who vocally don't like La La Land even though they're not film critics or awards voters (and why was that the stipulation, as if those are the only people who matter?). My FB feed tends to be full of people of color and musical theater fans (sometimes those two groups overlap, sometimes they don't). The PoC (and some white people, too) don't like the film for how it makes a white guy the savior of jazz while backgrounding the black jazz musicians. The musical theater fans just want it to be a better musical (specifically how it doesn't seem to know how to film some of the sequences, it drops songs altogether for a long stretch when the whole point of a musical is to use songs to tell the story, and wanting the leads to be better singers). Having said that, I also have musical theater nerd friends who LOVE it.
I'm not saying I agree with all of these criticisms (although I do agree with some of them), and I did enjoy the movie although I think it's flawed. But these criticisms are out there, on FB and Twitter. It wouldn't be totally surprising if some of them have made their way onto Chazelle's radar. I also wonder if him talking about the "cynics" is including all those people who didn't believe in the project while he was trying to get it made, not necessarily just those reacting to the end product now.
And I do love that line about the prom queen.
DJ, I mostly object to the idea of a backlash, since I (and others) who had seen it voiced issues about the film before it even opened. And many of the film's so-called haters actually liked/loved it. We just don't think it's perfect (or close to perfection). And I love Emma Stone (I actually even think she's great in her Woody Allen films), but she is not the second coming of either Ginger Rogers or Catherine Deneuve in this. She's good, but she didn't make it into my top five of the year, and I haven't even seen Aquarius, Christine, Things to Come, The Handmaiden, The Edge of Seventeen or Miss Sloane yet.