Fans of the Mean Girls franchise (there’s a show and a movie, so it’s a franchise) got a confusing treat today, as the official X account for the movie released a new trailer featuring a song by Olivia Rodrigo and no songs from the Broadway musical of the same name.
To be clear, the movie is a musical. It stars Reneé Rapp as Regina George (she also played the character on Broadway), Auli’i Cravalho as Janis ‘Imi’ike, and Angourie Rice as Cady Heron, who was portrayed by Lindsay Lohan in the original movie.
A lot of fans were bemused by the trailer, and for good reason. It started out by saying “This isn’t your Mother’s Mean Girls,” and purposely hiding the fact that the movie is a musical and not a straight remake.
In fact, if you didn’t know anything about the movie you would think it was just a regular film. There is dancing, but no singing in the trailer, only scenes of talking over “get him back!” by Rodrigo.
Obviously that threw some people for a loop.
“uhhh, why does this trailer hide the fact that it’s a MUSICAL? why am I only hearing Olivia Rodrigo???” one person said. Someone else suggested actual songs from the musical itself:
“songs that could’ve been used from the musical itself instead of olivia #MeanGirls
- 1. meet the plastics
- 2. world burn
- 3. apex predator
- 4. someone gets hurt”
The mother line also rubbed some people the wrong way. “The Mean Girls musical trailer did not have to come for us this hard,” someone else said, while sharing a picture of a woman in an old person’s mask. “As a 30 something millennial, this was triggering…” someone else posted.
In an interview with US Weekly, Rapp revealed that there have been some updates to the story since the Broadway version from a few years ago.
“A lot of it is different. Tina [Fey] is such a creative genius and such a creative freak, and her partner, Jeff Richmond, who does all of the music, is as well. So there’s definitely different things. There might be different songs. Some songs that are in the musical version might be in the movie or might not be.”
The original movie starred Lindsay Lohan as Cady, Rachel McAdams as Regina George, Lacey Chabert as Gretchen Weiners, and Amanda Seyfried as Karen Smith. Tina Fey, who wrote the original, is reprising her role as Ms. Norbury, and Tim Meadows returns as Mr. Duvall.
Mean Girls, the musical based on the Broadway show about the 2004 movie, hits theaters on Jan. 12.