'La La Land,' 'Beauty' herald more halcyon days for musicals

"La La Land," the Emma Stone-Ryan Gosling musical, which won six Oscars, has been racking up box office numbers that are remarkable for a musical - nearly $417 million globally so far, according to comScore - and even more for an original one with no previously known songs or story. Damien Chazelle's eye-popping, toe-tapping creation ranks third in all live-action film musicals, behind the 2008 "Mamma Mia!" and the 2012 "Les Miserables," neither of which were original.

"That's big-time money," said Paul Dergarabedian, a senior media analyst at comScore. "At times, the musical genre has been marginalized or not taken seriously. But this is serious business."

It's enough to make a musical fan break into sudden, joyful song - perhaps on the way to the multiplex, where this weekend Emma Watson's "Beauty and the Beast" is expected to have a huge, $120 million opening.

And if a Disney tale featuring a Harry Potter-caliber array of top British actors isn't your thing, you need only wait; there's a slew of other live-action musicals in the works, a combination of originals, sequels and remakes. 

This Christmas, we'll have Hugh Jackman as P.T. Barnum in "The Greatest Showman," with music by "La La Land" lyricists Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, and a year later the high-profile "Mary Poppins Returns" with Emily Blunt, Lin-Manuel Miranda and Meryl Streep, among others. Also reportedly on tap: a Will Ferrell-Kristen Wiig original musical about the little-known world of corporate musicals, and a Josh Gad musical with songs by Broadway luminaries Alan Menken and Stephen Schwartz. A musical version of the Broadway megahit "Wicked" is also coming down the pike.

In a broader cultural sense, is the musical undergoing a renaissance, or at least...