Mean Girls has posted plenty of promotional content for their latest movie, but here’s the catch — you might not have known it’s actually based on a Broadway musical written for the movie. Fans were confused after its first official trailer featured scenes set to Olivia Rodrigo’s ‘Get Him Back’ but with no musical numbers.
More misleadingly, the film is titled Mean Girls, sharing a name with its predecessor, although the musical and the original movie differ significantly. The cast includes Broadway powerhouses like Reneé Rapp, who plays Regina George in both the musical and the film, Moana star Auli’i Cravalho as Janis Ian, and Angourie Rice (Mare of Easttown, Black Mirror), as Cady Heron.
There are hints that the film is a musical if you look hard enough, with colourful dance scenes shown for a few seconds. Viewers who caught the Mean Girls movie teaser trailer, which included an iconic line from World Burn, one of Regina’s best solos of the musical, would be disappointed when the official trailer revealed no further about the other musical numbers.
And with Mean Girls appealing to the current audience of 2023, it wouldn’t be a movie about high school drama without social media, as various shots of characters reacting to the film’s events in a TikTok replica are shown throughout the trailer.
Whether the film lives up to the hype remains to be seen, but if you’re curious, the movie will hit cinemas on 12 January 2024.