Retailers pin hopes on musical soundtracks

11/11/2005 9:13 PM, Reuters
Margo Whitmire

Much as Broadway's "Chicago" razzle-dazzled cinemas in 2003, two new transplants from the Great White Way are hoping to cause a sensation among holiday moviegoers.

For soundtrack sales, the excitement surrounding sparkling screen versions of the Tony Award-winning musicals "Rent" and "The Producers" could be a shot in the arm for what is now the sector's poorest showing since 1997, the first year Nielsen SoundScan broke out soundtracks as a separate category.

Sony Classical will release the soundtrack to "The Producers" November 22, in time for Thanksgiving weekend sales. The hope is to build buzz on the film before its December 21 theatrical release.

Warner Bros. employed the same strategy with "Rent," releasing a double album with eight limited-edition covers of different cast members September 27, almost two months ahead of the film's planned November 23 debut.

First-week sales for the "Rent" soundtrack, which is featured prominently on front-end displays in Virgin stores and most major retailers, totaled 11,000 copies, according to Nielsen SoundScan. The CD has logged sales of 40,000 to date.

"We have a huge audience for Broadway materials," says Jerry Suarez, senior music product manager for Virgin Entertainment Group. "There is tremendous excitement around these shows when they're made into films."

'CHICAGO' HEIGHTS

Miramax's "Chicago," which made almost $200 million in domestic box office, became the highest-grossing movie musical since 1978's "Grease" when it passed the $100 million mark during the first month of its release.

The Epic/Sony Music soundtrack was the best-selling one of 2003 and established an industry benchmark with first-week sales of 83,000 copies. It went on to sell 2.2 million, believed to be the biggest total for a movie musical in the last 25 years.

"That soundtrack was just extraordinary," says Brian Poehner, VP of merchandising for Atlanta-based retail chain Value Music. "In general, we do very well with soundtracks, but 'Chicago' was just over the top."

In 2003, soundtrack sales, driven by "Chicago," accounted for 4.9 percent of yearly album sales, with 32 million units.

For 2005 to date, soundtrack sales are at 16.5 million, or just 3.6 percent of the total U.S. albums market. In 2004, soundtrack sales reached 28 million copies, or 4.1 percent of the market.

UNEXPECTED ROLES

The new film version of "The Producers," which is being released by Universal Pictures/Columbia Pictures, stars original Broadway cast members Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick, along with Will Ferrell and Uma Thurman.

"With 'Chicago,' you had film actors dancing and singing in a way that was unexpected for them," says Doug Besterman, who served as supervising orchestrator for the play and movie versions of the musical, the latter of which starred Richard Gere, Catherine Zeta-Jones and Renee Zellweger.

Besterman, who also is the supervising orchestrator for the stage and film versions of "The Producers," expects that Ferrell, in the role of neo-Nazi Franz Liebkind, and Thurman, as sexy Swede Ulla, will charm audiences in the same way.

Ferrell's Celine Dion-style power ballad performance of Liebkind's "Der Guten Tag Hop-Clop" is expected to be a "huge selling point," says Sony BMG Music director of marketing Leslie Collman-Smith, who is part of the marketing team behind the movie's soundtrack.

The song is one of the new features setting the album apart from the original 2001 Broadway cast recording.

"Chicago" also hit movie theaters with a new musical highlight, the Academy Award-nominated duet "I Move On."

"New material means more excitement," Collman-Smith adds. Another addition is the movie's Irving Berlin-style end-credits track, "There's Nothing Like a Show on Broadway," recorded by Lane and Broderick. The song was written by Mel Brooks, who won an Academy Award for the screenplay to the original 1968 version of "The Producers" and wrote the music for the Broadway production.

BUYING INTO 'RENT'

Much of the original Broadway cast is back for the film version of "Rent," including Taye Diggs in the role of Benny. Rosario Dawson, in the role of Mimi Marquez, will make her singing debut in the Sony Pictures Entertainment release.

Green Day producer Rob Cavallo came aboard to revitalize the music for the film adaptation, putting a mainstream pop/rock sheen on the arrangements.

"He was the only guy we could think of to give it the edge that it needed," says Revolution Studios head of music Denise Luiso, who oversaw the musical production.

Disc two of "Rent" features the ensemble performance of "Love Heals," a soundtrack exclusive that the musical's creator, Jonathan Larson, wrote for a friend who died from AIDS. Larson himself died in 1996, just before the play's Broadway premiere.

The soundtrack was rerecorded with the play's original cast members along with Dawson and Tracie Thoms, who fronts the popular track "Seasons of Love." That song was released to iTunes August 2, where it reached No. 5 on the most-played list, according to Luiso.

"'Rent' is a bit more contemporary musically, so my personal opinion is that it will go further," Poehner says.

Suarez, however, is betting on "The Producers" to achieve a broader reach.

"It has a cast that is much more well-known as far as mass markets and the states in the middle (of the country) are concerned," he says.

The next big Broadway hit in line for the Hollywood treatment is "Dreamgirls," due from DreamWorks in December 2006. Bill Condon will direct the screen version, with a cast including Jamie Foxx, Beyonce, Danny Glover and Eddie Murphy.

Reuters/Billboard