Musicals!!

Mr. Timberlake goes to work* on a DreamWorks feature.

Justin Timberlake has signed on to write and perform original music for DWA's Trolls.

Timberlake, who has notched 16 top 10 hits on the Billboard Hot 100, will serve as executive music producer for Trolls, overseeing the creative direction for the film’s music as well as performing several songs on the soundtrack. ...

* This news is a couple of days old, but it demonstrates how film trends go in cycles.

Not counting the Beatles and Yellow Submarine (and face it: all those songs in the animated feature were not created for the animated feature), Billy Joel was the pioneering rock and roller who wrote songs, sang and also acted in an animated feature. (There was country-western star Roger Miller who performed the same task in Disney's Robin Hood, but Rog was in a different musical genre.)

Then there was Elton John writing songs for Lion King, and Sting composing tunes for the ill-fated Kingdom of the Sun, but animated musicals fell out of favor** in the early part of the century. It wasn't until Tangled, Frozen, and now Trolls that the genre came roaring back.

When an animated musical makes a billion dollars, the odds are high that there will be other musicals coming along behind it.

** Okay. A lot of animated features have songs. But we're talking about pictures that have an abundance of music, and are remembered for their music. The "Shrek" franchise has songs, but nobody remembers those features for their zazzy, original numbers. It's the comedy and satire that stick with most people.