10 Recent Movies Ruined By Their Marketing

If you took the trailers for the new Mean Girls at face value, you likely assumed it was simply a remake/reboot of the iconic original 2004 teen comedy, but that wasn't quite true.

Rather, Mean Girls 2024 was an adaptation of the stage musical based on the original movie, and yet, the trailers were bizarrely shy about this, tapdancing around the musical numbers and making it look like a straight-up comedy film.

And so, on release weekend TikTok was flooded with moviegoers caught off-guard by the fact that the film was actually a 13-song musical. 

This is part of a recent trend in which other musicals, namely Wonka and The Color Purple, have shied away from emphasising their musical elements in marketing, due to the perception that general audience interest in musicals is waning, following numerous high-profile bombs like Dear Evan Hansen, In the Heights, and West Side Story.

Paramount straight-up confirmed as much in an interview shortly after Mean Girls' release, and while this left some audience members frustrated that they'd been sold a materially different movie, the gambit at least paid off for the studio, as the film grossed over $100 million worldwide.

All the same, ambushing audiences with a surprise musical totally out of nowhere? Not cool.