What happens when you take a story from the stage, that itself was adapted from a movie, and put it back on celluloid? Does it count as a remake if the storytelling medium has been massively altered, or is it an adaptation of an adaptation? Does anyone into film know what a “Broadway” really is? Such questions are fast and frequent whenever a Broadway musical based on a Hollywood film makes it (back) onto the big screen, entering the rare and confusing club of “Movie Musicals Based on Musicals That Were Based on Movies.”
Within a calendar month, we have gotten two such films: The awards-friendly The Color Purple and the January-dumped Mean Girls, both of which threaten to confuse audiences who are unaware that these films are not direct musical remakes of their beloved properties, and are fact the product of an entire stage show that happened in between. Here, we make the case for the films that outshine their original, the musicals that lose their onstage magic, and also the Italian ones.
Here are the best movies based on musicals that were based on movies:
10. Oliver! (1968)
This Best Picture-winning musical (one of ten in the Academy’s history!) isn’t by any stretch a travesty, but it’s ranked last on a technicality. While there had been an iconic film adaptation of Charles Dickens’ tale of orphan woe “Oliver Twist” by the time Carol Reed adapted the 1960 stage show, it could be convincingly argued that Lionel Bart’s musical was not adapting David Lean’s 1948 black-and-white drama about the young, gruel-loving urchin, but rather taking another shot altogether at Dickens’ text. They still make for a compelling comparison. While Reed’s version of Bart’s show sands a lot of Lean’s grim atmosphere and the necessary grit of impoverished London, it gives a terrific boost of energy to the miserable proceedings. It also marks a clear step away from the antisemitic tropes that Dickens used for Fagin—not least because Bart ditched the large prosthetic nose worn by Alec Guinness for Lean.
9. Nine (2009)
When asked to name the modern-age successor of Italian giant Federico Fellini, who among us wouldn’t proffer Rob Marshall? The director behind Chicago, Memoirs of a Geisha and no less than four joyless Disney franchise slogs brought this musical to life in a similar fashion to his Best Picture winner: With non-diegetic songs shot on a big, theatrically-lit soundstage. Nine is inexplicably based on Fellini’s opus 8½, detailing all the women who bear significance to a middle-aged, womanizing celebrity Italian filmmaker. When you replace Fellini’s surreal, dizzying craft with a series of slick but stilted songs, delivered one at a time by different cast members, the drama feels remarkably slight. Weirdly, the song “Be Italian” by Fergie is the best in the whole film.
8. Roald Dahl’s Matilda the Musical (2022)
Another filmed musical that could be seen as a direct book adaptation rather than a cinematic remake, the Netflix version of Tim Minchin’s Matilda musical has much clearer connective tissue with Danny DeVito’s 1996 adaptation of Roald Dahl’s kid wonder opus. Emma Thompson’s Machiavellian headmistress Miss Trunchbull completely matches Pam Ferris’ performance in style and vibe, and acts of spontaneous magic and comic violence from 1996 have been plugged into a charming but polished modern musical template. It’s not as timeless as Carol Reed’s Dickensian musical, but as it is more easily mistaken for a direct musical remake by those unfamiliar with London’s West End, it ranks higher on this list. I too wish these rules were simpler, but that’s showbiz.
7. Mean Girls (2024)
The Tina Fey-scripted, zeitgeist-shifting teen film was so foundational for this stage-to-screen musical adaptation that you could make a ten-minute supercut of all the iconic lines from the original that Gen Z actors faithfully repeat (several actors from the original film and musical also make appearances). Still, it’s a pleasurable enough experience to revisit Fey’s fizzy and fierce story of high school cliques on steroids, even if we slowly realize that what made Mean Girls so likable was how ruthlessly 2004 it was while watching. The 2018 musical is uber-poppy to a fault, with earworm melodies and not particularly complex lyricism, but it’s a Mean Girls musical! It gets a pass. Thanks to a game cast (especially pop star Reneé Rapp as the intimidating Regina George), Mean Girls gets to endure in its 20th year on planet earth.
6. The Color Purple (2023)
It took this story a respectable 38 years to make it back to the big screen, but The Color Purple has only been a Broadway show for about half that time. Directed by Blitz Bazawule (best known before now for directing Black Is King, Beyonce’s visual album accompaniment to Jon Favreau’s The Lion King), the tale of gendered and racialized violence giving way to a fierce sorority of hope and kindness is filled with great songs begging for incredible vocalists to blow us away. This film (and by extension, the musical it’s based on) draws on Alice Walker’s Pulitzer-winning novel more than it draws on Steven Spielberg’s film, but more than Oliver! and Matilda, there are unmistakable links to the 1985 dramatic adaptation. It’s produced by Spielberg and Oprah, and features a cameo from original star Whoopi Goldberg. Otherwise, Bazawule’s musical stirs but still feels lacking: Floaty, unfocused camerawork means The Color Purple often feels like a visual album rather than a deeply felt and stirring drama. More than any other film on this list, the original songs written to qualify for the Academy Award for Best Original Song stand out egregiously—a mortal musical sin.
5. Reefer Madness: The Movie Musical (2005)
This musical may take the most creative liberties with the film it’s based on—mainly because the 1936 original (also known as Tell Your Children!) was a church-funded, right-wing and intentionally alarmist extended-PSA about how smoking One Single Marijuana will turn teenagers into delirious, dangerous maniacs. It’s a frightful bore aside from one or two exquisitely over-dramatic moments from high kids, so it’s no surprise that the explicitly satirical 1998 musical adaptation (that never made it to Broadway!) is a much stronger work. This adaptation made it onto Showtime as a TV movie in 2005, with several actors (including Kristen Bell!) reprising their stage roles for 100 minutes of lively, funny and toe-tapping fun. Alan Cumming and Neve Campbell have guest roles too, because what musical isn’t better with them in the mix?
4. The Producers (2005)
Mel Brooks’ original 1967 comedy about Broadway fraud and Nazi musicals is a classic, but a lot of the jokes are just people screaming at each other. This wasn’t an issue for the 2001 musical version—the stage is a much more welcoming place for high-pitched farcical screeching, and the finely tuned and choreographed show won a record number of Tony Awards. When Broadway director Susan Stroman helmed the movie version, joined by original cast members Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick, it seemed like a recipe for success—but critics were less than impressed and audiences didn’t turn up. Despite misplacing nearly all of the original film’s madcap, infectious energy, The Producers (2005) is a good insight into why the Broadway version was such a titanic hit: The ‘40s-style musical numbers and absurdly heightened performances are just too winning to fully dismiss.
3. Sweet Charity (1969)
The second Broadway adaptation on this list originally based on a Fellini film, Sweet Charity saw Bob Fosse make his film directorial debut with an electric and scrappy musical about a sweet, naïve young woman who just needs to be loved, goshdarnit. Shirley MacLaine dazzles as a New York dancer-for-hire who keeps getting tossed by men who were previously happy to pour affection on her pretty ginger head—be they insurance actuaries or famous movie stars. Based on Fellini’s Nights of Cabiria, Fosse’s film is open-hearted without losing its bite, and came at the tail-end of the musical’s lifetime under the studio system, packing enough kinetic and dynamic song-and-dance numbers to signal the insane heights that the genre would climb to thanks to his influence.
2. Hairspray (2007)
Sure, it’s a musical that’s sanded away most of the livewire eccentricities of a John Waters film, and yes, despite doing his best performance in a generation, John Travolta in drag is no match for peerless four-time Tony-winner Harvey Fierstein (who originated the role of Edna Turnblad on Broadway) but good lord, Hairspray is an unrelenting riot. Every musical number bursts with brassy ‘60s rhythm, and the entire cast (Michelle Pffeifer! Brittany Snow! Zac Efron! Queen Latifah! Christopher Walken! James Marsden!) is acting like it’s their last night on God’s Green Earth. “You Can’t Stop the Beat” truly has untapped medicinal properties.
1. Little Shop of Horrors (1986)
How do you take a scrappy, tongue-in-cheek musical—that was based on a scrappy, tongue-in-cheek Roger Corman B-movie—all the way to movie musical glory? You get the best puppeteers in the industry and push animatronic boundaries with one of the strangest and most stellar ensemble casts of all ‘80s-dom. Frank Oz isn’t just an incredibly gifted technician, he’s a born performer, and this crowning directorial achievement perfectly brings together the show-stopping pizazz and giant-horticulture-maneuvering needed to bring Little Shop of Horrors to life. An all-time entrant into the “They Don’t Make ‘Em Like This Anymore” canon.
Rory Doherty is a screenwriter, playwright and culture writer based in Edinburgh, Scotland. You can follow his thoughts about all things stories @roryhasopinions.