Movie musicals are a tried and true genre, which have the potential to be both critically and financially successful. Contemporary Broadway musicals like In The Heights and The Prom were recently given a film adaptation, and that trend continues with Stephen Chbosky’s Dear Evan Hansen. The movie features a killer cast including original star Ben Platt, Julianne Moore, Kaitlyn Dever, and Amy Adams. And the first trailer showed Dear Evan Hansen is going to be a serious tear-jerker.
Dear Evan Hansen is a hit Broadway show from the musical minds of Pasek & Paul, who are known for their work on The Greatest Showman. It’s an emotional story that tackles issues like depression and suicide, and the first trailer showed those high stakes, plus some signature musical moments.
The trailer for Dear Evan Hansen is set to the backdrop of the Act I closing song "You Will Be Found." As the lyrics tell the movie's story about isolation and hope, the characters of the movie musical come together. Ben Platt's title character is a lonely high school student crippled by anxiety, who happens to have an encounter with classmate Conner Murphy (Colton Ryan) shortly before his suicide. Misunderstanding and tragedy set off a series of events that make for Dear Evan Hansen's many twists and turns.
Director Stephen Chbosky assembled a killer cast to bring Dear Evan Hansen to life on the big screen, and join original actor and Tony Winner Ben Platt. Julianne Moore plays his mother Heidi, a single mother trying to keep her head above water and monitor her son's mental health issues. The mixup with Conor puts Evan in direct communication with his grieving parents (Amy Adams and Danny Pino), and sister Zoe (Kaitlyn Dever).
As the trailer shows, Evan ends up lying to Conner's family, in hopes of giving them some sense of closure in the midst of a horrible tragedy. Eventually that lie snowballs, as a movement forms about Connor's suicide and Evan's message of hope. As you can imagine, there are plenty of tears along the way. Oh and lots of songs too, with Ben Platt's signature voice shining throughout the first Dear Evan Hansen trailer.
Obviously from the subject matter alone, Dear Evan Hansen is a far cry from what audiences saw with Pasek & Paul's The Greatest Showman back in 2017. But Dear Evan Hansen is a huge hit on Broadway, so there's definitely a very invested audience ready to see the film adaptation. It's currently unclear how much the story will be altered for the movie, but the important beats of the musical seemingly play out throughout the course of this first trailer. We'll just have to see which musical numbers end up cut, and which ones get their life in movie form.
Ben Platt's voice was the only one heard singing throughout the trailer, but Dear Evan Hansen should give musical moments to the ensemble cast, especially Kaitlyn Dever and Julianne Moore. Dever's Zoe is the female protagonist, who gets some lovely vocal features throughout the course of the show. As for Moore's character Heidi Hansen, she's very much an emotional core of the story. And smart money says she'll be able to shed some signature tears throughout the course of the movie's mysterious runtime.
Dear Evan Hansen is currently set to arrive in theaters on September 24th. In the meantime, check out the 2021 movie release dates to plan your next movie experience.
