Many have noticed the following trend in recent years, and it strikes everyone as incredibly strange. Whenever a major Hollywood studio invests millions in a high-profile movie musical, they insist on avoiding the fact that they did so in advertising the film. It may be noted that early reviews of John M. Chu didn't have any of the film's songs, despite being based on one of the most popular Broadway musicals of all time. Also, the trailers for "Mufasa: The Lion King" did not boast any songs from the film, despite being written by Disney superstar Lin-Manuel Miranda. Earlier this year, previews of the musical Mean Girls, also adapted from the Broadway show, had no singing in them, and ads for the 2023 hit Wonka were also songless.

This has led many pundits and critics to wonder why Hollywood produces a stigma against musicals. There is no stigma; the box office dictates against it. "Mufasa" has already collected over 328 million dollars, and "Wicked" is the sixth highest-grossing film of the yearhaving earned nearly $700 million. As mentioned, "Wonka" did a gangbuster with $634 million, and Disney's animated musical "Moana 2" surprised everyone with $882 million BO. One can even look back to 2016's $472 million in La La Land to see that musicals can be hits, even when they're not whimsical children's fantasies. Hell, even "Deadpool & Wolverine" had a dance number at the beginning.

But somehow, the advertisers keep in mind that flaunting song and game numbers in the film's publicity will somehow hurt its chances at the box office. It's an absurd belief, but here we are. A look back in movie history actually reveals that some of the highest grossing movies of all time are musicals, and a few of them are even highly rated by users of the Internet Movie Database.

Indeed, using IMDb as a guide, five notable musicals are among the best movies ever made.

It is worth stopping to notice that IMDb Top 250 is infamously skewed towards the violent and masculine. Crime films, prison dramas, action films and war stories tend to rank very high, while comedies, musicals, dramas and any films about female characters tend to rank far down the list. Oddly, horror films also tend to rank low. So it's a coup to admit that the list contains any conventional musicals.

Right near the bottom of the list, ranked #235, is Robert Wise's 1965 ultra-intelligible The Sound of Music , that year's Best Picture Oscar winner. When adjusted for inflation, The Sound of Music remains one of the highest-grossing films of all time. In 2024, he earned over $2.85 billion.

Based on the 1959 Rodgers and Hammerstein Broadway show (which in turn was inspired by Maria von Trapp's 1949 autobiography The Story of the Trapp Family Singers), The Sound of Music tells the story of Maria ( Julie Andrews), an aspiring nun in 1938 Salzburg with an angry, rebellious streak. Maria is hired by strict and rule-obsessed widower Captain Georg von Trapp (Christopher Plummer) to be governess to his brood of seven children. Georg wants the children to be obedient military soldiers, but Maria instead exposes them to music, art, warmth and more traditional family togetherness. Georg's heart will melt by the end of the film. The story is set against the backdrop of the rise of Nazi fascism, which will eventually invade their remote home.

The film is just as warm as Maria, and Andrews gives a career performance. And, yes, the songs will settle deep, deep into your brain. It is easy to play the song "Do Re Mi" on the piano.

Victor Fleming's 1939 film The Wizard of Oz it can easily be described as the most famous movie of all time. Drastically adapted from the novel by L. Frank Baum, tells the story of ... do I even need to tell you? The characters, songs, and iconography of The Wizard of Oz have become so deeply embedded in the American subconscious that we might as well consider them Jungian archetypes. You know the story. You can sing all of Harold Arlen's songs. You might even be able to recite the entire movie from memory. i can.

No list of the best movies of all time could be complete without The Wizard of Oz. Its whimsical fantasy, incredible performances (from Judy Garland, Roy Bolger, Jack Haley, Bert Lahr, Margaret Hamilton and Toto), dazzling colors and superb special effects remain impressive nearly 86 years after its release.

One can only speculate why IMDb users ranked The Wizard of Oz so low. As mentioned, the list tends to disfavor films with female protagonists, and Dorothy may not be as intriguing to many as, say, Don Vito Corleone from The Godfather or Tony Montana from Scarface. Also, The Wizard of Oz has become an icon of the queer community ("Dorothy's Friend" has long been code for queerness), and IMDb voters, for lack of a better term, seem to vote heterosexual.

Or maybe we all feel that The Wizard of Oz is such a cinematic standard that it should no longer be on the movie list. We all know it's the #1 thing by default and no one needs to be reminded to watch it.

At No. 88 is Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen's energetic love letter to cinema, 1952's "Singin' in the Rain." Set in 1927, Singin' in the Rain is a lighthearted fictionalization of the early days of sound cinema, and how performers famously had to adapt to memorizing lines and speaking into microphones. Kelly plays Don Lockwood, a vaudeville performer turned Hollywood stuntman who is eager to see where this new sound thing goes. He is joined by his hilarious best friend Cosmo (Donald O'Connor) and persistent aspiring performer Cathy (Debbie Reynolds). It will be Cosmo who eventually suggests that the talented Cathy dub the singing and speaking of the studio's biggest star, the whiny Lina Lamont (Jean Hagen) with a squeaky voice.

Gene Kelly didn't know how to make movies that were anything but cotton candy. He smiles through his songs and even laughs at the lyrics. Kelly also brought a dancing style to the big screen that was muscular and modern, a stark contrast to the spindly accuracy of Fred Astaire's generation. The songs were by Nasio Herb Brown and Arthur Fried. "Singin' in the Rain" features several "dream ballets" outside of reality, where the film pauses to let Kelly dance her feelings out. These are impressive showcases, even if lifted from the film. I have to guiltily admit at this point that I often progress through the "I have to dance" sequence.

IMDb voters aren't immune to Kelly's charms, and probably appreciate that Singin' in the Rain is as much a Hollywood history film as it is a beautiful, moody, glorious love story about music and dancing. His spiritual successor can be found in Damien Chazelle's Babylon.

Bollywood movies don't often get big theatrical releases in the United States, but sometimes one will break through. Note, the popular actioner "RRR" is actually Telugu cinema, coming from a different Indian studio system than Bollywood, and film experts will thank you for not mixing them up. Rajkumar Hirani's 2009 comedy epic 3 Idiots, however, got a limited release in theaters in Los Angeles, and the meager audiences that did make it to it were treated to one of the greatest Bollywood musicals of all time. It was also one of the most successful at the time, grossing $132 million worldwide.

3 Idiots starred Bollywood mega-actor Aamir Khan as Rancho "Rancho" Shamaldas Chanchad and tells the story of his college adventures with his two best friends Farhan (R. Mahavan) and Raju (Sharman Joshi). Over the course of the film's 171 minutes, the plot collapses into a decade's worth of after-school specials, including student pressures, romantic parties, campus suicide, an artistic conflict with disapproving parents, last-minute deliveries, a broken wedding, and a challenge. about the academic status quo. The ethos of the Bollywood machine seems to be one of entertainment guarantees: if audiences shell out money for a film, they get everything at once: love, music, melodrama, more melodrama, MORE MELODRAMA! Not to mention sexy people dancing and singing multiple times throughout. Unfortunately, part of the American audience is not ready for the bombast of Bollywood and some writers foolishly mocked him.

3 Idiots is a treat for Bollywood newcomers and comes highly recommended. It's nice that the IMDb voters were able to push this one down the list, beating out even Singin' in the Rain.

The highest-ranking musical on IMDb's top-250 is Roger Ahlers and Rob Minkoff's 1994 animated film The Lion King, which boasts Oscar-winning songs by Elton John and Tim Rice. The Lion King was a mass phenomenon when it was released, marking the zenith of the Disney renaissance of the 1990s. The Lion King tells the story of a lion cub named Simba (Jonathan Taylor Thomas, later Matthew Broderick) who is the heir to the lion throne of the African savannah. His father Mufasa (James Earl Jones) is kind and benevolent, but his uncle Scar (Jeremy Irons) is nasty and evil. Scar, like Claudius from Hamlet, plots to kill his brother and usurp the throne, forcing young Simba into hiding. Simba, like Hal from "Henry IV", grows up in a remote forest with bug-eating clowns, learning peace and happiness.

Simba, years later, is lured back to the savannah by his childhood sweetheart Nala (Moira Kelly) to wrest the kingdom from Scar.

The Lion King is often considered one of the best films from Disney Animation Studios, and many critics are impressed by its Shakespearean parallels. I suspect the IMDb voters do too. It has inspired remakes, sequels, prequels, TV shows, and video games. As of this writing, Mufasa: The Lion King, a prequel to the 2019 remake, has set the US box office on fire. Audiences love these Lions, and John/Rice's songs can still be heard in karaoke bars to this day.

Other musically advanced films have cracked the IMDb top-250 ("The Pianist," "Amadeus," "Some Like It Hot," "Monty Python and the Holy Grail"), but the above films are the only proper musicals on the list.