Why do film marketers hate singing?

The new Mean Girls movie is coming soon!

A reimagined twist on the original take, it’s chock full of some of the best known rising stars in the film and music world, including Angourie Rice and Renée Rapp, alongside comedy faves like Tina Fey, Tim Meadows and Jon Hamm.

But, curveball, it’s a musical. Not that the freshly released trailer would let you know – using Olivia Rodrigo’s in-vogue new tune “Get Him Back” to underscore the clips featured in the latest tease – rather than any of the original score from the film.

The musical itself has a whole raft of iconic tunes that have proven to be huge hits among young musical theatre fans – “Apex Predator”, “Revenge Party” or “World Burn” as obvious examples.

But in a world dictated by trends, TikTok sounds and focus-group marketing, the film opted to go for a song that is widely disseminated everywhere. Arguably, it’s so pervasive that its presence is almost meaningless – according to our social media coordinator, “Get Him Back” was a big TikTok trend a few weeks ago with users dancing along to Rodrigo’s lyrics.

The marketing for Mean Girls is far from the first campaign to avoid showing characters actively singing to camera – tick, tick, BOOM! did it for its main trailer, as did West Side Story, though admittedly the latter two didn’t choose a pop song alternative.

Of course, the film may be arguing that it’s opting for a “big reveal”, but given there’s already an album of numbers out there from the Broadway production, it’s not as though the tunes themselves are an unknown entity.

Marketeers shouldn’t feel reluctant to indulge the musical format with their campaigns – shying away from musical credentials only irritates converts, while doing little to make the trailer feel distinctive or unique. Indeed the most successful trailers, like the kinetic, subversive one for In the Heights, revel in having performers singing to camera. The film version of The Color Purple, also imminent, has an excellent performance of “Push Da Button” as a primary centrepiece in its latest trailer.

The film spawning a renaissance in modern musical movies, Chicago, featured a full sequence involving Catherine Zeta-Jones singing “All That Jazz”. Chicago became the highest grossing live action musical of all time upon release – beaten later by Mamma Mia!, which, you guessed it, wore its musical credentials like a heavily sequined Dynamo outfit throughout its marketing campaign.

Mean Girls has gotta get those tunes back – give us a clip of Rapp belting out a number and audiences will be there in their thousands.