SPRING AWAKENING Movie Musical - News & Discussion Thread

Wow I had no clue this was still in the works. I thought for sure it was going to be stuck in development hell forever.

I think this film really needs a gutsy/innovative director behind it for it to work like it should. No doubt the studio wants to sell this thing in a way that capitalizes on teen audiences and the TikTok crowd and that might mean toning things down and casting big bankable stars. But I really think this story demands an auteur behind the wheel. I keep dreaming about someone like Ari Aster or Greta Gerwig (two vastly different takes, I know) taking the reins. If McG is still on board as the director, I'm not sure if his track record gives me a ton of confidence in his ability to nail the material.

Also, part of me wishes they would incorporate elements from the Deaf West production into the film somehow. But short of changing the setting to a school for the deaf, I'm not sure how much they'll be able to borrow.

Updated On: 2/4/22 at 11:31 AM

What I would recommend is to make it a music movie, not a movie musical. Incorporate the song score as perpetual expressionist needle drops of anachronism and surrealism. Make it feel like Euphoria a century earlier, with the songs recorded by a mix of the cast and major recording artists.

darquegk said: "What I would recommend is to make it a music movie, not a movie musical. Incorporate the song score as perpetual expressionist needle drops of anachronism and surrealism. Make it feel like Euphoria a century earlier, with the songs recorded by a mix of the cast and major recording artists."

The score is already set up so that most, if not all, of the songs exist in their own sort of dream-world outside of the world of the main story. That's why Deaf West production was so enthralling, it explicitly framed the songs as the inner voices of characters who could otherwise only communicate with sign language. I'm just not stoked to see Hollywood actors in their mid twenties pretending to be sixteen years old and going full movie-musical with the material.

An Ari Aster Spring Awakening would blow my effing mind.