A Perpetual Motion Story

I admit to being slightly confused when people declare that they plan to go out and see every movie which has been nominated for the Best Picture Oscar once the finalist have been announced. Sure, I can see why you may want to see the contenders but I think we all know that once they expanded the category to the point it could have up to 10 movies a few of those films were only nominated to fill out the roster. So, if you were on the fence about seeing a movie I can understand why an Oscar nomination may push you over but if a movie looks terrible the first 50 times I see a preview no amount of critical praise is going to change my mind and get me to buy a ticket, especially when I don't like to listen to critics in the first place. (For example, this year there is no amount of awards which could get me to see "Amour".) I've missed plenty of Oscar winners in the past and I don't feel any large holes in my life, so I couldn't even guess how many nominees have passed me by. However, I admit that there are enough people who may be willing to have their minds change, so I totally understand why movie studios figure it is worth a shot to squeeze out a few more dollars and re-release an Oscar nominee which is now out of the theaters, especially since they can't cash in with merchandise like a kids movie. (I certainly haven't seen any "Argo" action figures.) The problem comes for those movies which come out around the same time as the nominations are announced. If those people want to keep the money coming in after the Oscar buzz dies, sometimes they have to get creative.

The last time I saw "Les Miserables"on stage in Boston they made a big deal of saying it would be the last time it would ever be in the city. Of course, I didn't believe it at the time. Nothing that successful ever really goes away. Besides, creating a false deadline is one of the oldest marketing tricks in the book and no one from the audience complained about it. While I am not sure if the show ever made it back to that theater, I am confident it has been performed in the commonwealth at some point in the last couple of years. After the movie came out in December and reignited interest in the musical I figured it was only a matter of time before it was officially revived and sent on tour again. Turns out I didn't even have to wait that long, because this afternoon it was announced that the show will be returning to Broadway in March of 2014 (and I thought movies liked to release previews too many months in advance). However, this is not going to be a simple revival of the show, as the producers are going to bring a few aspects from the movie to the re-imagined stage show. In other words: the new musical will be based more on the movie which was based on the previous musical which was based on the play which was based on the book. Everybody got that?

Of course, this is hardly the first time this has happened. Pretty much every successful Broadway play has been made into a movie at one time or another and Disney has been turning their animated movies into Tony-award winning musicals for the last decade. It makes a lot of sense - it is not often you can get two movies out of the same script (even though with the really bad sequels it may feel like you are watching the same movie) and be sure you will have an audience ready when the movie opens. Anytime Hollywood sees a shortcut you know they are going to try it and if it works once they have no problem going to the well a second time. Mel Brooks's great movie the "Producers" may have had the strangest circle of all. It started out as a funny-but-not-particularly-lucrative movie (hard to imagine it now, but it was very controversial in its day), was converted into one of most successful Broadway musicals of all time, winning a record number of Tony Awards and then they made a second, about-as-lucrative-as-the-first-movie version of the musical. I fully expect a movie version of Monty Python's "Spamalot" within a couple of years.

This reason this particular case sounds like a really bad idea to me is because I fear the producers are appealing to the wrong audience. Let's be honest - those audience members whose first experience with the story came in the movie theater are not going to come out and watch the stage version. They had 25+ years to do that and never made it a priority. The people who really drove "Les Mis" to box-office success were the theater nerds who had seen it multiple times on stage, loved it and dragged a few of their friends to the movies. I wrote this in my initial review of the movie, but it really felt like the more people loved the stage version the less they enjoyed the film adaptation. Therefore, if you were planning to revive the stage version, wouldn't you want it to stay more true to the original musical and get those people back to the theater? Not only is it less work, but it actually feels like the better plan. If they simply wanted to add the one new song they wrote for the movie to the stage (even though it wasn't very good) I think that would work out for both parties. Plus that way they can re-do the movie and make it closer to the stage version, then send the stage show out on another tour and on and on. Considering they can't very well make a sequel, this may be the only way to keep the story going.