August 10, 2007

Can 'High School Musical' do it again?

By Bill Keveney, USA TODAY

What time is it?

If you're a preteen or teenager — or the parent of one — you probably know the answer.

It's seven days, a few hours and way too many seconds until the sequel to the surprise TV hit of last year, High School Musical, airs on the Disney Channel on Aug. 17. Disney has given the movie's young fans a glimpse of what's to come by releasing What Time Is It, the first music video from High School Musical 2.

If you're not sure what this is all about, here's the score: High School Musical is a pop culture and marketing phenomenon, innocent enough for the Disney Channel and cool enough to fuel a new generation's interest in musicals.

Since its premiere in January 2006, the original two-hour TV movie has been seen by roughly 160 million people, according to Disney. It has generated $500 million in sales of DVDs, soundtracks (it was the No. 1 album of any type for 2006) and other retail items. There has been a concert tour by the cast and a stage version that just opened in Chicago. An ice show premieres in New York next month. The movie also has inspired about 2,000 real-life high school musical productions, Disney says.

Now the question is: Can Disney catch lightning in a bottle again, and come up with a sequel as popular as the original?

"Sequels have a built-in audience. Some people will see one even if it stinks," says Kirk Wakefield of Baylor University's music and entertainment marketing program. "The key is whether it sustains, whether it is as good in quality."

HSM 2 picks up after the original, which followed basketball star Troy Bolton (played by Zac Efron) and math wiz Gabriella Montez (Vanessa Hudgens) as they reluctantly, then joyfully, sang their hearts out and fell for each other while trying out for East High's annual musical. The first movie's simple message: Don't let peer pressure keep you from your dreams.

"It has such a positive message for kids, teens and parents everywhere. It tells people to reach for their goals and that yes, you have to face many obstacles to get there, but anything is possible if you work hard and never give up," says Brittney Wooten, 17, of Knightdale, N.C., who's planning an HSM 2 viewing party.

At a time when children expect increasingly sophisticated animation in movies, TV shows and video games, the original HSM was a throwback: a live-action musical with catchy songs and a lead character (Efron's Troy) who fretted over what friends and his father might think about him singing. Girls are HSM's core fan base, but it gained fans among boys by building sports into the story.

To observers of cultural trends, HSM's broad appeal is part of a larger picture.

"It keys into the popularity of music and dance that's sweeping the country with shows like So You Think You Can Dance, Dancing With the Stars and American Idol," says Neil Meron, producer of the new movie musical Hairspray.

"There's a hunger for that type of entertainment," says Meron, who didn't work on HSM. "There are no more variety shows, so people are getting a taste of singing and dancing with musicals and (those) shows."

Disney tapped into a desire others weren't satisfying, says Craig Zadan, Meron's producing partner on Hairspray and Oscar-winner Chicago. (They're working on a new Peter Pan movie for ABC.)

"Nobody had bothered to make a movie musical for kids," Zadan says. "The moment Disney Channel was smart enough to do one, it was a sensation."

Rick Adams, who hosts Radio KOL, an Internet radio show aimed at kids, thinks HSM picks up not only on Idol's sense of fascination with the audition process but also on the feeling "that it's good to stand up and be counted when it comes to your own talent." He says that's often a revelation for adolescents struggling to establish their own identity.

HSM executive producer Bill Borden says many boys saw themselves in Troy, a basketball star who initially was reluctant to sing in a musical. "I have three boys who love musicals. They all dance. I figured if these three kids — who were already into sports — liked musicals, why wouldn't other boys?" Borden says. "That's part of why the movie starts with a boy (doing) karaoke. And the very first dance after that was a sports thing, so (boys in the audience) wouldn't say, 'I'm going to leave … because this is a girls' movie.' "

The HSM movies could energize a pop music format that has faded in popularity, says Nancy King, director of the center for entertainment and tourism at California State University-Fullerton. "Pop music in the early 2000s kind of died off. Things like High School Musical drove this (genre) back."

Sequel a bit more 'mature'

HSM 2 starts as school lets out, taking the East High Wildcats — including spoiled drama queen Sharpay (Ashley Tisdale), her brother Ryan (Lucas Grabeel) and Troy and Gabriella's pals Chad (Corbin Bleu) and Taylor (Monique Coleman) — to a ritzy country club for work, play and more music.

Troy's moral compass takes a spin when he must weigh Sharpay's blandishments, including a cushy job and potential college scholarship, against his loyalty to Gabriella and his other friends.

The sequel is "a scootch more mature," Disney Channel Worldwide entertainment chief Gary Marsh says. That means that in the sequel, unlike the original, there is a real kiss. Even so, HSM 2 is still solidly G-rated chaste.

"It's still Disney Channel," Borden says.

Borden says children who sometimes face harsh situations at school see such innocence as ideal.

"I actually think that's the high school every kid would want," he says. "They want to be able to walk into high school and enjoy it. They want to be able to change cliques. They want to be able to be a rock star."

The HSM cast members have become just that. Efron, 19, is now a staple of teen magazine covers and stars in the Hairspray movie. In early July, screaming girls lined up in the rain eight hours before the London premiere of Hairspray to get a peek at Efron.

When the HSM cast's concert tour arrived in Brazil in May, camera-toting drivers followed the group's bus from the airport. And last week, HSM fans crowded New York's Times Square when cast members appeared on ABC's Good Morning America.

"It's testament to how the movie crosses cultural, international and class boundaries," Coleman says.

Efron and Hudgens got a dose of the frenzy at a recent Los Angeles Sparks WNBA game.

"There was a huge group of kids, probably 200, who wanted autographs," says Hudgens, 18. "We went up into the lobby, and the entire way there people were just reaching, grabbing at you, touching you. And at that moment, I was a Beatle."

The influence of teens and "tweens" — that marketing target group of kids ages 9 to 14 — who watch their favorite shows and movies over and over again is on full display now, says Rich Ross, president of Disney Channel Worldwide.

"Everybody is reading Harry Potter and going to see Transformers," he says. "High School Musical fits very nicely into a summer of opportunity for kids."

HSM's appeal has spread from tweens to their older sisters and younger brothers and parents, well beyond the age range Disney had in mind when it made the original movie.

Efron says he has talked to "super-excited" parents, has friends at UCLA who enjoy the film and has some fan mail that comes in "very, very premature handwriting."

For marketers, the tween appeal goes beyond intense devotion. "Almost all of their spending dollars are discretionary," Baylor's Wakefield says. "And music is one of the most important parts of their discretionary income. It's a key social element."

The new 'Grease'?

HSM would not have worked if it hadn't been of high quality, says Adams, who calls it "the new Grease" and praises the talent of the cast and the "genius" of director-choreographer Kenny Ortega.

Teens and parents appreciate the original movie's positive messages — even if they are delivered with "a ton of tentacles" from Disney, a company renowned for its ability to package and market images, says Lyn Mikel Brown, co-author of Packaging Girlhood: Rescuing Our Daughters From Marketers' Schemes.

Although Musical's 2006 premiere audience of 7.7 million has since been surpassed as a record for the Disney Channel by Cheetah Girls 2 and Bleu's Jump In! (which scored a new Disney Channel record of 8.2 million), few TV movies have shown HSM's staying power.

Movies generally lose much of their audience in just the first rerun on TV, but HSM's 21st showing on the Disney Channel in July was still a top cable draw with 5.8 million viewers — 75% of the premiere's audience. It was the most-watched basic cable movie of the month.

HSM, the movies that followed and hit series such as Hannah Montana have ushered in a new era of popularity for Disney Channel, and narrowed the audience gap between it and chief competitor Nickelodeon, Katz Television Group analyst Bill Carroll says.

" Given that at points in the past, Nickelodeon was head and shoulders above Disney Channel, to roughly have parity has to be a huge victory," Carroll says.

The HSM promotional strategy Disney is re-creating for the sequel includes teases, such as music video premieres on Disney Channel and disney.com.

Disney also is making the new movie available in advance for some cable subscribers, via on-demand service.

Promotion also will be heavy on the Radio Disney network, which helped make the HSM soundtrack last year's No. 1 album with more than 7 million copies sold worldwide.

Cast members' exposure on Radio Disney also has helped individual careers as Bleu, Tisdale and Hudgens have released hit albums.

Based on the buzz already, many analysts are expecting HSM2 to match or exceed the premiere ratings of its predecessor.

Disney and Borden already are planning a big-screen HSM that would take the characters through the senior prom and graduation, although the cast members aren't signed for that project.

After seeing the What Time Is It video, Radio KOL's Adams says HSM 2's prospects are bright. "If that's anything to go by, it's going to be even better than the first," he says.

But one song does not a musical make, Adams adds, and a huge hit can create an even steeper path for a sequel.

"Grease 2 wasn't that good, was it?"