In honor of the 15th anniversary of “High School Musical,” Variety spoke to cast and crew members about the making the film.
In the early aughts, Kenny Ortega had directed a string of “Ally McBeal” and “Gilmore Girls” episodes, but what he really wanted to was return to making movies. So he asked his agents to keep an eye out for a TV movie, something “under the radar” that would allow him to quietly flex his filmmaking chops as he slid behind the camera for his first feature since 1993’s “Hocus Pocus.” (And before that, he’d directed another cult Disney favorite, the 1992 musical “Newsies.”) The script that caught his eye, a Disney Channel Original Movie with the working title “Untitled High School Musical Project,” became a phenomenon despite Ortega’s desire to keep a low-profile. “High School Musical” was the rare made-for-TV movie that transcended its humble origins and captivated a generation of teens and tweens when it premiered on Jan.20,2006. It didn’t just launch the careers Zac Efron, Vanessa Hudgens (known then as Vanessa Anne Hudgens), Ashley Tisdale and more. It also became a financial juggernaut for the Disney Channel, driving unprecedented demand for DVDs, dolls, T-shirts, posters, sleeping bags, lunch boxes — you name it, Troy and Gabriella’s faces were on it. Then came a sold-out concert tour, traveling ice shows, touring stage productions, and a show at Disney theme parks. By the time the sequel debuted on Disney Channel in 2007, setting a new cable television record with a huge 17.2 million viewers, the property was minting money. The third and final movie with the original cast, “High School Musical 3: Senior Year,” scored a theatrical released and generated more than $250 million at the global box office. In its first five years, the “High School Musical” franchise amassed $4 billion in retail sales worldwide. And its popularity hasn’t waned. Last year, Disney Plus debuted the spinoff series “High School Musical: The Musical: The Series,” which focuses on a new generation of East High Wildcats putting together a production of what else? High School Musical. Though Disney, years ago, began casting a fourth “High School Musical” film with a new set of cast members, it never took off. Ortega says maybe it’s for the better. He’s a fan of “High School Musical: The Musical: The Series” but making another movie set at East High “isn’t in my thinking.” One thing on his bucket list? “I would love nothing more than a reunion where everyone, including Zac Efron, could have dinner together and say ‘Wow wasn’t that something?’ We don’t even need cameras there.” In honor of the 15th anniversary, Variety spoke to cast and crew members about the making the film — and how a modest teen musical became one of the most commercially successful TV movies ever and taught younger viewers to love musicals. For the uninitiated, “High School Musical” centers on Troy Bolton (Efron) and Gabriella Montez (Hudgens), two high schoolers who meet during winter vacation and discover a mutual love of music after serendipitously singing karaoke together. By coincidence, Gabriella moves to Troy’s hometown of Albuquerque, New Mexico in the new year and transfers to his school, East High. After some reluctance — and to the dismay of the entire student body — they try out for their school’s winter musicale. Their travails included battling judgement from drama club president and preeminent thespian Sharpay Evans (Tisdale) and her twin brother Ryan (Lucas Grabeel), as well as Troy’s best friend and basketball teammate Chad (Corbin Bleu) and Gabriella’s new confidant and scholastic decathlon partner in crime Taylor (Monique Coleman). If that plot sounds vaguely familiar, it’s because “High School Musical” plays like a lovingly kitschy mashup of “Romeo and Juliet” and “Grease.” Peter Barsocchini, the film’s screenwriter, admits to borrowing the concept of star-crossed lovers (in the world of East High, the jocks vs. the math geeks replaced the feuding Capulets and Montagues). “We did what everyone does when you need an idea,” Barsocchini says with a laugh. “You rip off Shakespeare.” Yet the backstory was heavily inspired by his own upbringing at an all-boys Catholic high school. One day, the star athlete confided a dark secret to Barsocchini. “I’m going to tell you something, and if you tell anyone, I’ll kill you,’” his friend whispered. “‘I always wanted to be a ballet dancer.’” It’s not the kind of skeleton that would make kid’s today flinch. But way back when, he recalls, it would have turned the school upside down. “High School Musical” loyalists know that story served as the influence behind Troy Bolton, the school’s basketball jock MVP who has a secret passion for harmonizing. Other small tidbits from Barsocchini’s life were woven into the script, like the name of his then 10-year-old daughter, Gabriella. Sharpay, meanwhile, was named after a dog that once sunk its choppers into him. “Seems nice, but bites,” he says. And so casting directors Natalie Hart and Jason La Padura embarked on an arduous mission, one that involved multiple callbacks and auditioning hundreds of young actors, before finding lovable starlets to play Troy, Gabriella and the rest of the East High Wildcats. “We ran auditions as if we were doing a Broadway musical,” Ortega says. “We put the kids through a really long process. Agents would call casting directors saying, ‘What is going on? Why are you keeping them so long?’ I was set on making sure these actors had all that it would take.” From day one, the vision was clear. “In our very first meeting,” Hart recalls, “Kenny said: ‘This has the potential to be this generation’s ‘Grease.’ He really wanted people who had strong singing, acting and dancing qualities.” The casting process took around two months, a time in which Hart estimates they “saw the world.” Some were eliminated immediately because they couldn’t sing.
