The Greatest Showman will receive a boost with the release of a sing-along version on 23 February. Since The Greatest Showman has barely declined since its release, it’s impossible to plot a trajectory to calculate where it might end up, but Fox clearly has La La Land’s £30.4m in its sights. The last film to manage it was Paddington (2014). The film has delivered six straight weekends with £2m-plus box office – a feat rarely achieved. The Greatest Showman debuted on the last weekend of December with £2.58m (plus previews), then delivered tiny declines of 6%, 11%, 2% and 3%, before posting an 8% rise in the latest chart. A near precedent occurred back in 2011, when Arthur Christmas rose to No 1 in its fourth week, returning to the summit for its seventh session (which was Christmas weekend). Fox claims that no film has ever before taken the top spot in its sixth week of release, and it’s true that the vast majority of chart-topping films debut at number one. But it had its strengths, and there are people out there who do love it, and now that I'm older, and hopefully wiser, I can kind of see why.Distributor Fox is trumpeting the film’s exceptional success. Was it the greatest musical adaptation ever? No, far from it. There is so much more to the story beyond one musical and one movie, needless to say, Gerard Butler's Phantom is not the end of the world. So if you want a definitive version with a cast that many consider to be the best, there it is. But 2012 came along, and the 25th-anniversary performance at the Royal Albert Hall was released on DVD. The first eight years were undeniably hard, at a loss for any other version of the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical that was accessible. I think it's time this film moved into the same territory as the first Twilight movie, and that we, those who really didn't like this movie, made peace with its existence. I really do anticipate that both camps won't really be happy with my conclusion, either in saying that Gerard Butler as the Phantom is okay, or in saying that it was just okay. It still gets me, Gerard Butler had his moments as The Phantom, and does it with an edge and a danger that someone who would go on to play Leonidas could give it. Starting off with seductive, dominant, and alluring, then becoming volatile and domineering, and the Final Lair where he stands in front of Christine and just starts sobbing. Just watching one man slowly chip away bit by bit until the ending gives way to the center: Someone who has been devoid of love his entire life and is desperately crying for help. The Phantom, as a character in any of his many adaptations, is one with a lot of layers. He can act superior around the people he's haunting, throwing his voice around and openly mocking the Opera House staff because he knows they're too scared to do anything about it, but when Christine shows him affection, he fully breaks down and weeps like a lost little kid. He played the role as if his charm is a very fragile veneer for something furious and unstable. He wasn't afraid to go to a terrifying and ugly place when he needed to, like in the murders, and at the moment when Christine rips off his mask. He almost works in spite of the emotionally clumsy direction, and the whole Mills & Boon vibe the movie had. Singing aside, which really was just fine, where Butler shines is in the acting performance of The Phantom. This role makes so much sense when you learn that it was his performance in Dracula 2000 that drew Schumacher's eye, playing a darkly brooding, revenge-driven monster. More importantly, in spite of the idea that the director and producer, Andrew Lloyd Webber, had in their head for the Phantom, which was more of the darker side of a love triangle than a sympathetic villain, Gerard's performance as the Phantom is actually pretty underrated. But both Schumacher and Webber believed Butler's singing voice had an edge to it that they felt fit the character, and Butler put the hard work in to be ready for this movie. He was in a rock band as a student, and he was aware of how strange it was to be in that position. He was not an experienced singer before shooting this film. However, none of this is Butler's fault, and he tried his absolute best.
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