You Can Sit With Us
How Paramount sold ‘Mean Girls’ to a new generation of moviegoers
You’d be forgiven if you thought butter was a carb — just like it’s totally understandable if you didn’t know the new “Mean Girls” is a musical.
That’s intentional. Paramount, which is releasing the movie, chose not to explicitly market it as a song-and-dance spectacle, according to the studio’s president of global marketing, Marc Weinstock.
“To start off saying musical, musical, musical, you have the potential to turn off audiences,” he says. “I want everyone to be equally excited.”
Despite the cultural prominence of Tina Fey’s 2004 comedy, which propelled Lindsay Lohan, Rachel Mcadams and Amanda Seyfried to stardom, Weinstock’s job — selling the masses on (and clearing up any confusion about) “Mean Girls” — is trickier than trying to make fetch happen.
The story is the same. Cady Heron, recently arrived in Illinois from Africa, must navigate the lawless jungle of high school. But this rendition — adapted from the 2018 Broadway show — has singing and dancing. It isn’t a remake or a sequel, and there are new actors (Reneé Rapp and Angourie Rice lead the cast) embodying the Plastics.
“This is a movie within the ‘Mean Girls’ world,” Weinstock says. “We didn’t want to distill it down to one thing, because it’s not one thing.”
• Where do you start with marketing a familiar property? There are two audiences: those that grew up with “Mean Girls” and those that didn’t. On “Mean Girls” Day, Oct. 3, we released the movie on Tiktok in 23 separate clips. Non-fans were like, “Wait, this is great.”
• Some fans of the original were shocked by the tagline, “This is not your mother’s ‘Mean Girls.’” People misconstrued it and took offense. All we meant was that it’s a new twist. People took it literally. “What do you mean? I’m not a mom!” We moved away from that and toward “A new twist from Tina Fey.” It’s her vision.
• Did you intentionally avoid advertising the movie as a musical? We didn’t want to say it’s a musical because people tend to treat musicals differently. This movie is a broad comedy with music. It appeals to a larger audience. We have a musical note on the title, so there are hints without being overbearing.
• How did you make it clear that new actors are playing Regina George and Cady Heron? Our first teaser was Reneé Rapp to the camera singing, “My name is Regina George.” It immediately said, “This is your new Regina. Lindsay Lohan and Rachel Mcadams are not in this movie.”
• What kind of fun did you have with quotable lines from the 2004 film? We didn’t want to copy the lines exactly because we didn’t want people to think they were getting a version of the old movie. We used odes, like a bus ad that says, “Look both ways, Regina!” It’s funny for those who know, and those who don’t know want to investigate it.
• People online were upset that the premiere was held on Monday and not Wednesday. I know. That was due to talent availability. It’s a boring answer.