Can Mean Girls help that musicals aren't popular?

Mean Girls fans needed to be kind of psychic as the reboot hit UK cinemas.

Or at least, they did if they weren't a fan of musicals, after Paramount chose not to promote the film's songs.

A studio boss admitted it downplayed the genre out of fear it could "turn audiences off" because people treat musicals differently, external.

So if the singing and dancing came as a shock when you sat down in the cinema with popcorn - it wasn't your fault.

The original Mean Girls, starring Lindsay Lohan, Rachel McAdams and Amanda Seyfried became a cult classic after its 2004 release.

And the reboot, starring Angourie Rice, Reneé Rapp and Auliʻi Cravalho hit cinemas like a big yellow school bus when it was released in the UK on Friday.

It's not the first time the Plastics have gone all musical on us - the 2024 version follows a successful Broadway show with song and dance numbers nominated for dozens of awards.

So why are Paramount putting musicals in the burn book?

"It's really strange there's a kind of snobbery in musicals because musicals historically have always done incredibly well," says film critic Rhianna Dhillon.

"Look at how well-received Wonka was just before Christmas, people were absolutely thrilled by that film, and weren't put off by the fact that it was a musical at all," she says.

So far, Mean Girls has topped the UK and US box offices in its opening weekends, and made more than £3.25m on its British release.

But in America ticket sales dropped by 59% in its second week, according to magazine Variety, external.

Paramount may not think musicals are fetch, but someone who does is stage actor and writer Lewis Cornay.

"What's so exciting about them redoing the Mean Girls film is the fact that it is a musical, so I'm surprised that they wouldn't capitalise on that," the 28-year-old tells BBC Newsbeat.

But this is girl world, not Broadway world, and Lewis thinks a lot of people can be turned off because of stereotypes.

"Musicals still aren't seen as very cool," says the actor, who recently starred in a musical version of Spongebob Square Pants. "We need to change that.

"People still expect musicals to just do one thing but musicals are so much broader than that and I think they're cleverer than people might assume."

Rihanna agrees, saying there is an idea that people will just write off musicals even after recent hits like Tick Tick Boom and The Little Mermaid.

"So I'm not really sure why this stigma still exists when the box office shows that people are still really willing to go to the cinema to see a musical," Rihanna says.

She thinks Paramount's decision to downplay this side of the film could even backfire.

"That, to me, feels like Paramount doesn't have a huge amount of faith in the film," she says. "It's a really odd thing to try and trick audiences into going to see it."

Could this explain the movie's steep drop in the US?

It's not unusual for films to perform much worse in their second week, but Rihanna says word about Mean Girls will have spread quickly online.

"Initially people might be going because they've not heard that it's a musical," she says.

"But as soon as that starts to trickle down, cinema viewers are gonna know what they're getting themselves in for."

Online reviews have also been divided, with some praising the updated take on the 2004 movie.

And there are plenty, like one Rotten Tomatoes user, external, clearly disappointed when they got to the cinema and the film "turned out to be a stupid musical".

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