If you didn’t know that Joker: Foile á Deux is, in fact, a musical, you would be forgiven. The highly-anticipated but critically panned sequel is another instalment in a recent trend of musical films reluctant to announce themselves as such. With its trailers lacking any trace of the singing that populates every few scenes, and director Todd Phillips going so far as to say ‘The movie’s not really a musical’ (he later backpedalled to admit it actually is ‘a full-on musical’), we have to ask: why have Hollywood musicals become so embarrassed by their nature, and why do studios continue producing them regardless?

The last decade has brought a flurry of musicals to the big screen, ranging from La La Land to The Greatest Showman, Bohemian Rhapsody to In The Heights. With original musicals, biopics and Broadway adaptations to choose from, audiences have been spoilt for choice. Many of these films were loud and proud about their glitzy musical status, not hesitating to push elaborately constructed dance sequences and original scores to the forefront of their marketing. The genre thrived, with several musicals nominated for Academy Awards. Now, similar films hesitate to even hint at their musical status, presumably in the hope they don’t become memes on X (formerly Twitter).

Despite the genre’s aforementioned accolades, a 2023 Deadline article remarked that ‘test-audience focus groups generally hate musicals and the only way to get people into the theatre with one is to trick ’em’: a jarring shift from the commercial and critical successes of only a few years prior. This sudden aversion to the musical seems strange, given how some crown jewels of cinema such as The Sound of Music and Singin’ In the Rain are heralded as classics. While music in film was once celebrated as a huge technological advancement and a guaranteed payday for the studios, it’s now been relegated to second-class status.

Perhaps it’s down to COVID nearly killing the genre entirely. While pre-pandemic there was no shortage of musicals proud to announce their identity, the lockdown years produced a string of box office bombs and critical flops that led to the genre becoming self-conscious. Films such as In The Heights, Dear Evan Hansen and West Side Story clearly emphasised their musical status, but it appeared that an unlucky combination of poor marketing, PR disasters and a global pandemic led to box office failures. In the case of of Dear Evan Hansen, perhaps it was that audiences didn’t buy a 27-year-old Ben Platt as an 18-year-old boy. In turn, studios adopted a refusal to advertise musical films as fiercely as they once did.

Considering these financial losses, it’s somewhat understandable that studios shifted their marketing campaigns, becoming deceptive to deliberately obscure diegetic music’s presence and crucial role in these films. Wonka and Mean Girls (2024) fell victim to this trend, with audiences caught off-guard when characters burst into song and dance. Marc Weinstock, Paramount’s president of global marketing and distribution, defended the decision, saying ‘We have a musical note on the title, so there are hints to it’. While these discrete ‘hints’ may reassure the studios that they aren’t actively deceiving their audiences, I’m not entirely convinced.

Maybe the highly-anticipated release of Wicked will reorient the studios feeling a little too comfortable cloaking their musicals. Its marketing strategy contrasts that of Mean Girls and Wonka. Audiences aren’t left to decode tiny music symbols on posters; instead teasers of nearly every musical number spearhead the campaign, letting audiences know quite clearly what theyll be getting themselves into. And with Rotten Tomatoes already reporting Wicked as ‘certified fresh’ with a score of 91%, perhaps this will reassure studios to shift tactics and let musicals be musicals again.

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