Mean Girls has finally been released! Originally scheduled for Paramount Plus, the executives opted to send this film to theaters after a positive reception from test audiences. The original 2004 film is still considered a classic, with plenty of quotes used to this very day, so when it was revealed that another version was confirmed, most people were scratching their heads wondering if Mean Girls needed a reboot.
Unbeknownst to audiences, this version of Mean Girls is an adaptation of the broadway musical. Based on the advertisement, you wouldn’t know first-hand that this version was a musical. There are strong hints in the trailers that it is a musical, but none of the musical numbers are played up in full and the ads play up the nostalgia factor from the 2004 classic.
Despite being No. 1 for the second week in a row, Mean Girls dropped massively; this would be okay if this film opened at $60 million plus, but consider it was a $32 million opening weekend and there was no strong competition in it’s second week, it feels that Paramount made a mistake misleading the general audience.
Wonka Mislead Audiences As Well
Wonka was never advertised as a musical. Sure, if you go back into the history of Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory, you’ll find plenty of musical moments throughout the films. However, they were never outright musicals. Wonka hid their true intentions better than Mean Girls. There were at least teases throughout the trailer that Mean Girls was a musical, but Wonka focused on the plot without including one single musical number.
However, there wasn’t an uproar over the prequel. Fans enjoyed the film as Wonka just inched past the $500 million mark worldwide. Wonka isn’t the first film to mislead audiences with their advertisement. Barbie is a big culprit of this. The campaign wisely didn’t highlight the political aspects of the film and focused on it being a fun comedy meant to entertain the masses. And it worked. More importantly, audiences continued to flock to the theaters to check out Barbie, which was ultimately the highest-grossing film of 2023.
It’s understandable why executives pulled this stunt as musicals aren’t that popular in the modern age. The assumption is that the film itself will win over audiences based on its quality, but that might’ve backfired given the massive second-weekend drop. To be clear, Mean Girls is far from a flop as the latest version had a small budget of $36 million, so it’ll end up being a nice financial win for Paramount in the end. However, it’s possible that the film could’ve done better if it was clear that the new version was based on the Broadway musical.
Musicals Aren’t A Popular Genre
The first movie musical is The Jazz Singer, which emerged in 1927. That means movie musicals have been a part of film history for 97 years. Some of the best films have come from this genre; with The Sound of Music and Mary Poppins being the most notable. However, musicals aren’t popular in the modern era. Granted, there’s been a couple of commercial and critical successes such as La La Land, Les Misérables, The Greatest Showman and of course, Wonka, but the genre as a whole is a rarity in the mainstream culture.
That’s because there are more misses than hits: Dear Evan Hansen, Cats, Rock of Ages, West Side Story, The Color Purple, and In The Heights are the most recent flops that made studios hesitant to greenlight more musicals. Though Mean Girls will be considered a success since it’s already recouped more than its budget, it likely won’t reach the heights that Wonka has amassed at the box office.
It also won’t make the returns that the original Mean Girls made in 2004, which made $130 million (not adjusted for inflation) worldwide. We’re in an era that’s dominated by superheroes, sequels, and reboots, and even though Mean Girls somewhat falls in the latter category, many deem it as an unnecessary adaptation from an original that remains timeless.
Did Studios Make The Mistake Of Misleading Audiences?
Yes. It’s understandable why studios didn’t want to simply advertise the film as a musical because there’s just no demand for them in the movie market. Wonka proves that musicals do have a place in today’s mainstream, but the bigger issue with the new Mean Girls is that the marketing was confusing. People didn’t understand if this was a reboot and thought it was pointless to check it out because the original 2004 film is still fresh in pop culture.
This isn’t to say that the new Mean Girls is bad, but Paramount should’ve embraced the differences between the original and musical versions. There’s no guarantee advertising the film as a musical would’ve garnered more box office revenue. However, there’s a lot of negative press surrounding the film because of that single fact. Paramount banked on the nostalgia of the 2004 film, so naturally, audiences assumed that this was a remake for the modern generation. Misleading the masses rarely leads to a great outcome. While it worked for Barbie and Wonka, Mean Girls had an uphill battle to climb since it was piggybacking off the fame of the original movie.
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