High School Musical
Short description
Troy Bolton is the star of his high school basketball team, and Gabriella Montez is a quiet student who excels at mathematics. They meet during a karaoke performance over the winter holidays and discover a shared love of singing. When Gabriella transfers to Troy's school, East High, the two secretly try out for the school musical, a decision that unsettles the school's social order. Their friends on the basketball team and the academic decathlon squad want them to stay focused on their own competitions, while Sharpay Evans, the reigning star of the drama department, sees the newcomers as a threat to her place in the spotlight. The final callback falls on the same day as the basketball championship and the academic decathlon, forcing Troy and Gabriella to balance the expectations of their teams with their own ambitions.
Kenny Ortega directed the film, which came after his earlier work on Newsies and Hocus Pocus and marked the start of a series he continued with High School Musical 2 and High School Musical 3: Senior Year. Peter Barsocchini wrote the screenplay, Don Schain produced, and the cast includes Zac Efron, Vanessa Hudgens, Ashley Tisdale, Lucas Grabeel, Corbin Bleu and Monique Coleman, among 67 credited performers. Made for four million dollars, the film drew a modest response on IMDb, where it holds 5.7 out of 10 from around 105,000 votes. On TMDB it stands at 6.5 out of 10 from a much smaller pool of voters. A critics' rating of 5.7 out of 10 from 21 reviews places professional assessments in line with the wider audience score.
What's left behind the scenes
- High School Musical-1 entered the Guinness Book of World Records as the first television film to have nine songs simultaneously appear on the Billboard Hot 100's list of the 100 most popular songs.
- Initially, Ashley Tisdale auditioned for the role of Gabriella Montez.
- In the first installment, Zac Efron does not sing himself.
- Corbin Bleu auditioned for the role of Ryan.
- The premiere of the film on the American cable channel Disney Channel attracted an audience of 7.7 million viewers, becoming its largest in 2006.
- The soundtrack of the television film received a Billboard Music Award as the best soundtrack of 2006, and went four times platinum in Ireland, twice platinum in Spain and the UK, platinum in Italy, and gold in France, Germany and Portugal. Since its release on January 10, 2006, six individual songs from High School Musical-1 have become "Gold Singles." In the US, the album from the television film not only became the #1 album of 2006, but also the #1 soundtrack and the #1 children's album of the year.
- In Russia, the main characters of the film were voiced by singer Sergey Lazarev (Zac Efron) and participants of the television project "Star Factory" Ksenia Larina (Vanessa Anne Hudgens) and Mikhail Veselov (Lucas Grabeel), as well as Evgeniya Otradnaya (Ashley Tisdale), a participant in the Russian qualifying round for the Eurovision Song Contest 2008.
- Other translations of the film include "School Musical," "Higher School of Music," and "Musical in High School."
- The title "Classy Musical" was conceived as a working title to avoid filming without a title. But no matter how hard the creators tried, they couldn't come up with anything worthwhile. They reluctantly had to approve it as the final one.
- The movie was filmed in 24 days.
Similar movies
Auditions in India
Casting calls in USA
Castingi w Polsce
Кастинги в Україні
