The Last Five Years is the latest musical to hit the big screen, but if the current trend of movie-musicals continues, it won’t be the last. We take a look at this new release and a few other shows that deserve a film adaptation.
The Last Five Years, released in cinemas today, is an surprising choice to be gaining traction as the next big movie-musical, for a variety of reasons. It has a cult following in the musical theater community, but 90% of the general movie-going public wouldn’t have ever heard of it. It’s been produced onstage around the world, but it only ever made it to Off-Broadway in New York. The show’s writer, Jason Robert Brown, is a Tony Award-winner, but he’s no household name. None of its songs have ever been covered on Glee.
But most interestingly, it has a format that seems near-impossible to transfer into a film and have it remain engaging – The Last Five Years tells the story of a couple, Cathy and Jamie, showing the story of their relationship from different perspectives – Jamie’s in chronological order and Cathy’s in reverse, with the lead characters only performing together once, in the middle – at their wedding.
The aforementioned couple are portrayed by Anna Kendrick, who’s fresh off of yet another singing role in the rather more high profile Into The Woods, and Broadway darling Jeremy Jordan, known onscreen most notably as Jimmy Collins in Smash. The movie – directed and adapted by Richard LaGravenese, who fell in love with the show after hearing the original cast album – takes liberties with the musical’s unique format, providing more character interaction in scenes where a live audience was left to imagine the scenario taking place.
Anna Kendrick singing in movies equals a surefire hit, and The Last Five Years snagged her early. Kendrick took this role in 2012, before Into The Woods, even before her mainstream breakout Pitch Perfect was released in cinemas, and her co-star Jeremy Jordan is a joy to watch in any medium – get ready to swoon as he shows off his classic leading man qualities in cinematic high definition. This movie is going to work.
But all this has got us thinking about the genre from here on out. People are becoming more and more eager for movie-musical adaptations, and it seems like the little guys are carving out a space for themselves and proving that they can do this, too, just as much as the big names can. The Last Five Years had a budget of under $5 million, compared to the $61 million spent on Tom Hooper’s Les Miserables – the possibilities are opening up in terms of viable ways to create a musical film. So the big question is: what’s next? What musical theater show, big or small, should make it to the movies as soon as possible?
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