On December 27th, 2002, director Rob Marshall’s first feature film, Chicago, was released in theaters. The film is based on the 1975 musical of the same title, which similarly was adapted from a 1926 play. Marshall’s movie featured stars like Renée Zellweger, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Richard Gere, Queen Latifah, John C. Reilly, Christine Baranski, Taye Diggs, and Lucy Liu. The movie broke box-office records and became the first musical in over 30 years to win best picture. Still, despite Chicago’s unquestionable success, during a chat with The Hollywood Reporter on Chicago’s 20th anniversary, the film’s director revealed that he’d never expected his first big movie to have the impact it did.
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Chicago tells the tale of fame-hungry murderess Roxie Hart (played by Zellweger) and Velma Kelly (played by Zeta-Jones), who develop a rivalry while seeking help from the slick lawyer Billy Flynn (Gere). Though the Mary Poppins Returns director admitted to THR that Chicago is his favorite musical, he never envisioned his version having the popularity that it did. He said, “I was blissfully naive in many ways, specifically of how it would do. At that time, live-action musicals were just dead. Moulin Rouge! had played the year before, and that helped open the door. But I was very much aware that musicals just weren’t being accepted. I thought it would be a small, niche film that a few people would see.”
But, of course, Marshall’s film had a much more significant impact than he’d thought it would. Chicago ended up making $306 million worldwide (the equivalent of $507 million today) and became the highest-grossing live-action musical at that point in time. The movie also won six Oscars, including best picture and best supporting actress (Zeta-Jones). Zellweger, Gere, and the film itself also received Golden Globe wins.
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Rob Marshall Pitched His Concept for Chicago Before He Was Attached to the Project
Miramax
Still, Marshall’s attachment to the project happened unexpectedly. He said, “So they called me in for a meeting to discuss Rent, but I knew that the Chicago property was out there and that they were having a real difficult time figuring out how to bring it to film. Chicago was my favorite musical — I had directed it Los Angeles, but I also just loved it growing up. I sat down to tell Meryl Poster, Harvey Weinstein’s right hand: “Before we start talking about Rent, can I tell you what I think a way to approach Chicago would be? Because it hasn’t happened yet.” (Laughs.) I started explaining my thoughts, conceptually, about the film and how I saw it.”
He continued, “She grabbed me and brought me into Harvey’s office. I then spent hours in his office describing how the film could be done. It was this idea that there’d be two different worlds: the world of the vaudeville stage, where the musical numbers took place, and then the realistic world of Chicago in the ’20s. At that point, it was rare to mix two different worlds at the same time within a film. But I pointed to MTV videos at that time (laughs), that you could have many different layers happening simultaneously. I actually performed “Mister Cellophane” for Harvey in his office, explaining that the character of Amos would be in Billy Flynn’s office, in a real scene with him, pick up his hat, and when he puts on his hat, he’d be on stage.”
From there, Marshall dealt with the struggles of bringing a musical to the big screen. He said, “They had talked to me early on about choreographing, so I had seen all the scripts of Chicago. The biggest problem is, they were trying to turn it into a book musical — a musical where people sing. What they didn’t understand is that Chicago’s a concept musical and was built that way. All the musical numbers in the stage play are all vaudeville turns. All the numbers have to be presentational numbers that happen on a stage. That’s what they had never done. A couple days later, they gave me the film to develop. (Laughs.) I brought [screenwriter] Bill Condon on it and John DeLuca, my creative partner, and we started working out how to create Chicago as a film with this concept in mind.”
He later added, “It’s very tricky doing musicals on film because it’s a much more realistic medium. In a theater, when you watch a musical and someone starts to sing, you’re in an unnaturalistic environment. Immediately, you’re already in a theater with wings (laughs), so you can accept a lot of things. On film, it’s very difficult to find your way into musicals and someone singing. It’s something I’ve worked hard, with all the musicals I’ve done, to find a way into the singing that feels organic. It’s the trickiest thing about musicals.”
