Did ‘La La Land’ Change the Industry?

Back in 2016, Damien Chazelle’s second film hit theaters and got praise all around. La La Land received 14 Academy Award Nominations, becoming film with most nominations of all time. It then went ahead and won 6 of those. La La Land even won Best Picture for a short 2 minutes before stepping away and giving that title to Moonlight.

It’s a brilliant motion picture all throughout. But could it be even more?

We theorize that La La Land may have changed the whole movie industry. Why? There is currently an influx of quality musical movies coming from Hollywood; something we haven’t seen in decades. And this has been happening, coincidentally (or maybe not?), since the La La Land release. Maybe, possibly, the success of Chazelle’s film inspired filmmakers and studios to produce more good musical movies. Let’s look at some stats.

These are the major musical film releases from 2010 to 2016:

• Tangled (2010)
• Happy Feet Two (2011)
• The Muppets (2011)
• Rio (2011)
• Les Miserables (2012)
• Pitch Perfect (2012)
• Rock of Ages (2012)
• Begin Again (2013)
• Frozen (2013)
• Annie (2014)
• Into the Woods (2014)
• Muppets Most Wanted (2014)
• Rio 2 (2014)
• Pitch Perfect 2 (2015)
• Straight Outta Compton (2015)
• Moana (2016)
• Sing (2016)
• Trolls (2016)
• Sing Street (2016)
• La La Land (2016)

Now, animation is a different story. Kids enjoy the music, different studios are usually in charge, and animation is generally supposed to have a cheery tone throughout; the main demographic for those films is, after all, children. So let’s take animation away. This is what we’re left with:

• The Muppets (2011)
• Les Miserables (2012)
• Pitch Perfect (2012)
• Rock of Ages (2012)
• Begin Again (2013)
• Muppets Most Wanted (2014)
• Annie (2014)
• Into the Woods (2014)
• Pitch Perfect 2 (2015)
• Straight Outta Compton (2015)
• Sing Street (2016)
• La La Land (2016)

These are only the big releases. This is what, presumably, reached the general audience. There is plenty more trash that has come out during those years.

So, 12 releases. Note that there are no major live-action musical films in 2010. Out of these 12, 2 (Rock of Ages and Annie) have a rotten score on rottentomatoes.com. So, we’re left with roughly 10 quality live-action big musical film releases between 2010 and 2016. That’s an average of 1.6 movies a year.

Now, let’s look at all musical film releases after La La Land‘s success. We’ll be doing this one without the animations straight away.

• Beauty and the Beast (2017)
• The Greatest Showman (2017)
• Pitch Perfect 3 (2017)
• Bohemian Rhapsody (2018)
• Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again (2018)
• Mary Poppins Returns (2018)
• A Star Is Born (2018)

7 releases in 2 years. Out of these 7, only 1 is rotten on rottentomatoes.com. So, we’ve got 6 quality live-action big musical film releases in 2 years. That’s an average of 3 movies a year, almost double than before La La Land. But not only are these releases quality; out of the 6 movies, 5are Academy Award nominees. Those are incredible odds.

One can argue that the 2017 releases weren’t really influenced by La La Land since those movies were probably already filmed and in post-production even before Chazelle’s masterpiece.

If that’s the case, let’s look at some upcoming musical film releases. The big ones being:

• Aladdin (2019)
• The Lion King (2019)
• Cats (2019)
• In the Heights (2020)
• West Side Story (2020)

One can never know for sure if these will be good or successful, but we can presume so with some degree of certainty. Aladdin and The Lion King are two long awaited Disney productions, Cats is a very famous story with Idris Elba, Taylor Swift, Ian McKellan, and Judi Dench signed on to the project, In the Heights is an adaptation of a Lin-Manuel Miranda story, and West Side Story is directed by Stephen Spielberg. All sound as very promising and possibly extremely successful projects.

So, the comparison is clear. Coincidentally or not, since the La La Land release, more and more quality live-action musical films are pushing their way through Hollywood. Is it because of La La Lands success? One can only theorize. We think that yes, Chazelle’s film definitely has something to do with it. But it could just be the industry evolving. We can’t know for sure. All we can do is rejoice that we’re getting more and more good musical movies.

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Pouty Boy

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