Peter Bart: Hollywood Musicals Pin Hopes On Hard-Won Harmony Between Oscar Voters And Audiences

The sound of music was back with us this week in the form of two polar opposite productions that may intrigue audiences but challenge marketers.

Maestro started streaming on Netflix after auditioning in a (very) few select theaters. Will its narcissistic protagonist, Leonard Bernstein, prove bigger than life on theater screens but too big for the tube?

Wonka, by contrast, is a study in promotional ubiquity, fragments popping up on everything from TBS to the Food Network. Its campaign reflects the determination of Warner Bros Discovery, like Netflix, to overcome the genre funk (think West Side Story or Dear Evan Hansen).

Hovering in the background are the bakeoffs, recaps and revisits fostered by an Academy eager to get out the vote for international candidates, fulfilling its global scenario.

Gil Cates, the colorful impresario who presided over 14 Oscar shows and rescued the genre from the Snow White debacle, would likely have been delighted by Barbenheimer. Voters in 2023, he’d reason, finally will be able to vote on movies they have actually seen, perhaps even in theaters.

In interacting with Oscar intrigues, Cates was always bemused by the contradictory reactions of filmgoers that reflected on where and how they saw a movie. A film that won a 12-minute ovation at Cannes often played flat on the home screen, boring its audience of one.

Bradley Cooper, exuberantly conducting a Mahler symphony, may need a big screen and an expectant room to energize viewers. Similarly, the May December movie-within-a-movie conceit might appeal more to cineastes at Telluride than to the popcorn crowd in Peoria.

Oscar voters remember Netflix’s frantic campaign in 2018 to encourage them to see Roma, its Alfonso Cuarón art movie, at the tidy Netflix screening room in Hollywood. There were daily emails and hourly phone calls, followed by espressos and cookies and perfect sound, all of which helped persuasive publicists explain the meandering plot.

Today, of course, the Netflix offerings are available at the lavishly restored Egyptian Theatre as well at the Paris in New York, and Netflix no longer has to beg for attention. Roma failed to win the big prize anyway – some critics went into therapy when Green Book won Best Picture.

So will the musicals be able to capitalize on a moment when so many major audience movies delayed their coming-out parties? The resounding success of The Sound of Music in 1965 brought 20th Century Fox back to life, but also led to a chain reaction of failures like Doctor Dolittle.

Audiences, it seemed, were never quite able to catch the tune.