From the new cult favourite The Greatest Showman to classic crowd-pleasers like Grease and The Sound Of Music the sing-a-long has become an essential part of our cinema-going life
Buried the critics, The Greatest Showman is now a cult classic, thanks to Sing-a-Long nights where fans, well, sing along. If that’s not the one that you want, maybe Grease is. Or you could really let it go at Frozen. So, which will YOU choose?
Fans, some dressed in circus founder PT Barnum’s trademark top hat, or bewhiskered like his bearded lady, are singing in their seats and dancing in the aisles, cheering and booing to order and yelling, ‘Daddy, Daddy, Daddy!’ whenever his two button-cute daughters appear on screen.
It’s not the kind of behaviour that would usually be welcome during a film screening, but here, in London’s Prince Charles Cinema, it is positively encouraged. A host has already warmed up the 300-strong crowd, so when the lyrics to The Greatest Showman’s first song begin to unfurl onscreen, a bouncing scarlet top hat keeping time, fans are in full voice.
The Greatest Showman was described as ‘a shrill blast of nothing’ by Rolling Stone magazine, but the new sing-a-long version has captured the imagination of millions worldwide
You can't go wrong with a sing-a-long screening of the classic musical The Sound Of Music
A sing-a-long version of Disney’s Beauty And The Beast, starring Emma Watson, is currently on a UK tour
This is the bespoke singalong version of the film – and it has captured the imagination of audiences worldwide. It’s been the salvation of a movie that suffered lukewarm reviews and poor ticket sales when it was released in December. A decade-long passion project for its star Hugh Jackman, who plays the American circus impresario, and featuring millennial favourites Zac Efron and Zendaya, it was described as ‘a shrill blast of nothing’ by Rolling Stone magazine.
Week on week, however, audiences disagreed. The Greatest Showman’s joyous retelling of the American dream, its sentimental examination of love and loyalty, its exuberance and the sheer all-singing, all-dancing spectacle of it, made it a word-of-mouth success.
This, along with the popularity of the film’s soundtrack – No 1 in the UK album charts for nine weeks, a US chart-topper, the most popular iTunes download in 77 countries – prompted 20th Century Fox to put a singalong version in cinemas. So, while the Prince Charles is Britain’s best known venue for singalong cinema, The Greatest Showman Singalong has also been screened by national chains Odeon, Vue and Cineworld, with Odeon alone welcoming 34,999 fans at 110 venues around the country. The result is a new cult classic. Last weekend, 11 weeks into the film’s UK run, it showed a 26 per cent week-on-week increase in ticket sales. It is now within a whisker of Jackman’s film version of Les Misérables, with total UK takings of £37.3 million compared to Les Mis’s £41m. The movie industry, stunned by Showman’s 11 consecutive weekends with receipts topping £1m, expects its popularity to continue.
Olivia Newton-John and John Travolta in Grease, already an established favourite for sing-a-long screenings
The stable of Sing-a-Long-a Productions includes the Disney film Frozen
Isle of Dogs (2018). Set in Japan, Isle of Dogs follows a boy's odyssey in search of his dog
The film was swiftly added to the stable of Sing-a-Long-a Productions, which includes The Sound Of Music, Grease, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Dirty Dancing and Frozen. Mamma Mia! was given a special one-day release last Sunday on Mother’s Day (with the sequel expected to be a big sing-a-long hit this summer) and Disney’s Beauty And The Beast, starring Emma Watson, is currently on a UK tour.
Producer Ben Freedman is the man who created and has developed the Sing-a-Long-a empire over the past two decades. Why does he think The Greatest Showman has become such a success?
‘The music is immensely sing-along-able to and it captures the message of the moment: celebrate everyone and be happy,’ he says. ‘Nobody dies, and you walk out of the cinema more inspired and more optimistic than when you went in. People come to a singalong event with family and friends – they’re singing to each other as much as they are singing along to the film.’ Freedman isn’t surprised that in an era when home movies have never been more readily available, people still to go to the cinema for a communal experience. ‘We are collective people, and this is about the joy of sharing.’
For more details of the next Sing-a-Long-a film screenings, go to singalonga.net
