5 Musicals Like Wicked That Need Movie Adaptations

While it’s true that entertainment comes in many shapes and sizes, its oldest and most joyous form arguably can be found in song and dance. Just look around the world. England has Shakespeare. Italy came up with some of the greatest operas ever. China is famous for xiqu (and Zhao Lusi singing the OST for her dramas). And America has musicals.

For better or worse, however, Hollywood has a long history when it comes to adapting this country’s musicals. We say this because, well, musical adaptations haven’t always been a home run for movie producers. You just need to take a look at Dear Evan Hansen, A Chorus Line, Les Misérables, and Cats (rest in peace) for examples of great musicals that didn’t quite translate well to the silver screen.

That said, when a musical adaptation works, it really works (think West Side Story, The Color Purple, Tick, Tick… Boom, The Sound of Music, Chicago, and Mamma Mia). And with a much anticipated Wicked also finally coming out soon, it may be time to dive into the archives and ask which lucky musical should be next.

So without further ado, here are five musicals that, in our opinion, make the priority queue for a film adaptation.

1. Hadestown

Hadestown might just be the musical that everyone wants to see adapted for the silver screen, but is scared to get in case Hollywood ruins it (cough cough Cats cough cough).

To be fair, Hollywood is pretty hit-or-miss with musicals in general, and it certainly has a track record for being a miss for musicals as inventive and brave as Hadestown. On the surface, Hadestown is a retelling of the ancient Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, and the well-known tragedy of the former daring to enter the underworld to rescue the latter — only to lose her at the very end by turning to look at her.

Admittedly, Greek myth might seem pretty removed from Broadway, New York. But not so in Hadestown. In Hadestown, the Greek underworld is an industrial hell wreaked by poverty and climate change, Eurydice is a poor working-class girl who ventures below simply because she thinks it’s a ticket to a better life, and Hades is the guy literally singing about why people should build a wall.

In short, Hadestown belies the imagination even on the stage — and it would be notoriously difficult to pull it off on film. That’s why animation might be the way forward, if it were in the right hands. Either gorgeous stop-motion or old-school 2D animation could capture the surrealist beauty of the musical. We’re not picky!

Good songs to listen to: “Chant,” “Chant (Reprise)”, “Wait For Me,” “If It’s True”

2. Fun Home

The Internet clearly agrees with us on this one, because everyone from The Mary Sue to Jake Gyllenhaal has publicly endorsed a big screen adaptation of the musical based off of Alison Bechdel’s graphic novel memoir of the same name (the latter believes in it so much that he secured the rights to produce it a few years back, and was slated to star in it as the closeted gay dad.)

As we mentioned, the musical is itself an adaptation of the graphic novel memoir Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic. Alison Bechdel is the American cartoonist who created, drew, wrote, and published the book over a span of seven years. In it, she tells the story of how she grew up and came out as queer in a dysfunctional household through painstaking panels of black line art. Its musical adaptation was a similarly powerful and haunting feat on Broadway that won five Tony Awards in 2015, including Best Musical.

And if you’re wondering, where have I heard that name before? It’s probably because you recognize Alison Bechdel from the famous Bechdel Test, which she originated: does a work (for instance, Star Trek or Star Wars) feature at least two female characters who talk about something other than a man? Now, the world deserves to see her graphic-novel-turned-musical unequivocally pass the Bechdel Test on the silver screen.

Good songs to listen to: “Ring of Keys,” “Telephone Wire,” “Changing My Major”

3. Ragtime

A Ragtime movie already exists, but it’s based on the 1975 book and not the 1996 musical.

That’s a problem, because the musical might just be one of the greatest underrated musicals out there. To pull this grand production off, it famously tends to require a huge cast of at least 30 actors and a large orchestra that can do justice to its soaring score. That’s in part because it tells the story of three distinct “ensembles” of people, each with unique character profiles: the Black community in Harlem, white upper-class families in New Rochelle, and Eastern European immigrants newly arrived in America for the first time.

So through curtain-dropping showstoppers like Wheels of a Dream and Make Them Hear You, we hear and see how these communities interact, struggle, and grow in early 20^th century New York City. But it’s not just the quality of music on display that should win it a film adaptation: it’s also how incredibly relevant Ragtime’s themes still are today. It directly confronts extremely difficult but necessary topics like the class divide, immigrant rights, feminism, and systematic racism, and its power lies in how powerfully it can speak to our time and argue for a better future.

So, yes, Ragtime is, at its heart, also just a great musical in the traditional fashion, with towering tunes that would bring the crowd onto their feet in any theatre. A film adaptation would get it the flowers it deserves in the year 2024 — as well as redemption for a musical that never got the laudation that it should have received while it was on Broadway.

Good songs to listen: “New Music,” “Wheels of a Dream,” “Till We Reach That Day,” “Sarah Brown Eyes”

4. Hamilton

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last decade, you have probably heard about the phenomenon that took Broadway by a storm ever since it premiered in 2015. If, however, you indeed have no clue what Hamilton is, here’s a quick run-down: it’s a biographical musical of one of the Founding Fathers, Alexander Hamilton. With a backdrop of none other than the birth of America, from his rise through the Revolutionary War to his fall after the creation of the United States government, Hamilton also puts the “music” in “musical,” as it’s entirely sung and rapped—there is only one or two lines of dialogue throughout the entire performance.

To be honest, including this one on this list is a little controversial, in no small part because there’s already a great pro-shot of Hamilton that’s available to watch on Disney+ as we speak. Opponents of making it a live adaptation also have some very good points, pointing to the famous rotating stage, the sparse production, and the time-traveling nature of many of its songs as factors that would make Hamilton extremely different to translate to the big screen.

Yet a film adaptation one day may be inevitable due to Hollywood and its eye for profit. And there is a case to be made for it: what’s to say that a bold, brash, and one-of-its-kind musical like Hamilton won’t bring a new kind of energy to the silver screen as well, so long as it’s in the hands of a skilled and creative director?

So here’s another suggestion for when that happens, while we’re at it: make it animated! Indeed, a lot of talented artists have already given us beautiful depictions of what an animated Hamilton film might look like.

Good songs to listen: “Alexander Hamilton,” “My Shot,” “Wait For It,” “The Room Where It Happens”

5. Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark

Look, we know that Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark is also a bit of an unorthodox choice when it comes to musicals that should be adapted into films, considering how, ahem, badly it was received when it premiered on Broadway—in no small part due to all of the horrific accidents that the cast suffered during its run.

But it’s not just that: with a budget of $65 million, Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark was one of the most expensive Broadway musicals ever produced, if not the most expensive. And what did it get for all of its labor? Lackluster reviews from everyone who watched it, and an abrupt cancellation after just three years.

But all of the above is exactly why we would argue that it should get a second chance on film. The Spider-man franchise is one that thrives on film, and has a rich history on the silver screen. One more film adaptation—with singing!—may get it a better reception than a live musical ever did. Most of all, a film production would probably guarantee the actors and actresses a much safer, injury-free environment than the musical ever did.

Good songs to listen: “Boy Falls From The Sky,” “DIY World,” “Turn Off the Dark”

Rose Atkinson-Carter is a writer with Reedsy, a marketplace that connects authors with the world’s best self-publishing resources and professionals like editors, designers, and ghostwriters. She lives in London.