The Greatest Showman

The Greatest Showman is a musical drama about Phineas Taylor Barnum, the American showman who built a career on spectacle in the nineteenth century. Starting from modest circumstances, Barnum gathers performers whom polite society rejects and turns them into the attraction of an unusual museum and later a travelling show. His ambitions extend beyond the box office: he wants the acceptance of the wealthy families who look down on his enterprise. To that end he teams up with a respected theatre producer, Phillip Carlyle, and later takes the Swedish singer Jenny Lind on tour across America, a venture that pulls him away from the family and performers who made his name.

The film is directed by Michael Gracey and written by Bill Condon and Jenny Bicks. Hugh Jackman plays Barnum, with Zac Efron as Carlyle, Michelle Williams as his wife Charity, Rebecca Ferguson as Jenny Lind, Zendaya as the trapeze artist Anne Wheeler, and Keala Settle as Lettie Lutz. It was Gracey's first feature, followed by Better Man and Tangled.

Released in December 2017, the film cost 84 million US dollars and took about 435 million worldwide, a strong return on its budget. Audience response has been warm: it holds 7.5 out of 10 on IMDb from roughly 345,000 votes and 7.9 out of 10 on TMDB from just over 10,000 votes. The picture drew a divided critical response, with a critics' rating of 6 out of 10 from 263 reviews, well below the marks given by viewers.