In 2024, the musical ‘Wicked’ celebrates its 10th anniversary. Contrary to fans’ expectations, Wicked is said to be coming to the public as a movie rather than a musical. Meanwhile, ‘Aladdin’, which is familiar with Disney movies, is also scheduled to land in Korea. As content is being recreated across the boundaries between movie and musical genres, some are wondering whether it would be meaningful to go see it even though it has the same original content, and what the difference is between a musical movie and a musical. From now on, we will delve into OSMU, especially the movie and musical genres.
What is OSMU?
OSMU stands for ‘One Source Multi Use’ and refers to a business structure that creates high added value by using one original work (source) in various fields or genres. In other words, it refers to the widespread use of an attractive original work through various media and business methods.
A representative example of success is that Victor Hugo’s novel “Les Misérables” has been produced in various ways, from movies to plays and musicals. Basically, OSMU is a reproduction of a successful original work, so it can be said that a certain degree of box office success is guaranteed. Additionally, if the original work has a strong fan base, the promotional effect is significant.
However, due to incompatibility between contents, side effects such as box office failure, misuse of contents, and uniformity of the art world also coexist.
From movie to musical.
So, what is the work reproduced as a musical from the original movie and what characteristics does it have?
Many of the original musical films were made by Disney, a powerhouse in musical animation. Among them, “The Lion King,” an animation produced by Disney and released in 1994, was made into a musical in 2022. Like the original work, which received a tremendous response from both critics and box office, the musical is also considered to be the biggest hit in the history of Broadway musicals. In the case of “The Lion King,” all the characters were animals, so there were many concerns about whether it would be possible to translate it into a stage play. However, director Julie Taymor mixed mask dance and puppetry with African masks, and it is said that a unique stage art was created that surpassed the artistic perfection of the original animation.
The musical adaptation of the movie “Big Fish” released in 2004, also shows a great stage adaptation. Among the movie scenes, there were concerns from fans of the original film about how the scene where a daffodil field unfolds before their eyes would be brought to life on stage. However, these concerns turned into admiration through the stage production. The stage floor opens to reveal yellow daffodils, and the mirror castle tilts slightly to reflect the daffodils on the floor, turning the whole world into yellow light. The scene where yellow flower petals fall from the sky seems to announce the success of a delicate and romantic production.
In this way, when moving from a movie to a musical, the currentness of the scene stands out, as does the choreography and makeup. There are many difficulties in adapting the film because there may be limitations in stage production. Even the lines and lyrics are edited and new numbers are even added, which can be used in reverse to showcase original performance art.
From musical to movie.
There are so many different movie adaptations of musicals. “Rent”, “Mamma Mia”, “Wicked”, “Sweeney Todd”, “Dear Evan Henson”, etc… Among them, we introduce “Hero”, an original musical that was made into a movie for the first time in Korea, and “Chicago”, which was an overwhelming hit.
“Hero” is a movie based on the well-received original musical, but it is difficult to say that it was actually very successful. Despite choosing the genre of a movie, there are many criticisms about the boring scene transitions and camera work without cut transitions, and the tone of voice that does not fit a musical except for the main character, and the overall box office performance is lagging. However, what is noteworthy in terms of production is that, unlike the original musical, the Japanese lines and number lyrics were changed to Japanese. In existing musicals, everything was in Korean out of consideration for Korean audiences who do not know Japanese, but in movies, subtitles can be translated, which can be evaluated as deepening the sense of immersion in the content. In addition, it was possible to evoke information about the protagonist a little more kindly to the viewer, such as adding a Hoeryong battle scene in Hoeryong City.
In the case of “Chicago,” both the movie and the musical were huge successes. The somewhat unrealistic 1920s Chicago of the original musical was realistically recreated, and some numbers were deleted and the story was adjusted. What’s interesting about directing is that it was produced by filming two movies, a musical and a period drama, then cutting each scene and putting them together. It can be seen as a creation that transcends time and space constraints and draws on both the advantages of the movie and the original musical.
Conclusion
We looked at a few examples of OSMU performances that crossed the line between content and satisfied the many demands of fans. There are many successful and failed cases, but I hope that the artistic level of the performing arts industry will be raised through OSMU’s various challenges.
Source | CY Stage
Trans/Shared by | Musical in Life
Musical in Life 