Parents, you might need to console your tweens and teens: it’s a bittersweet day for fans of Disney’s mammoth “High School Musical” franchise. After two Disney Channel movies, one silver screen flick, and countless albums, merchandise, theater and international spin-offs, the era of the Wildcats as we know it is over.
But the story isn’t entirely finished, thus the silver lining to the cloud. Ashley Tisdale, who played the drama queen antagonist of the series, signed on to star in the spin-off tv movie “Sharpay’s Fabulous Adventure.”
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The movie starts filming this summer for a 2011 release on the Disney Channel. It will feature Tisdale’s character Sharpay Evans bringing her beloved dog Boi along with her to New York City, as she attempts to make her Broadway debut. There, she will encounter her match: a diva-like starlet to rival and torture her in a tables-turned twist.
“Sharpay’s Fabulous Adventure” marks the end of the first High School Musical era, as Tisdale is the only member of the original HSM cast to sign on for more. So while the story has ended, sadly, for Troy and Gabriella, at least it will continue with Sharpay in her fabulous new setting.
At least, that is the hope. It’s possible that “Sharpay’s Fabulous Adventure” won’t make it off the ground. Tisdale has signed on and news of the spin-off has hit the internet, but we’ve heard this before.
Last year there were rumors of a fourth direct HSM sequel: “High School Musical: East Meets West.” While the IMDB page still exists and there aren’t any stories saying the movie ISN’T happening, there aren’t any real updates either. So I have to chalk HSM 4 up as another film in Disney’s limbo. Here’s hoping that, for the sake of HSM’s massive legion of fans, the same won’t happen for “Sharpay’s Fabulous Adventure.”
I can sympathize a bit with High School Musical fans. I’m old enough to have missed the High School Musical craze, but young enough to remember my days of Disney Channel original movie addiction. Back in the late 90s and early 00’s we didn’t have anything on the phenomenon level like HSM.
Disney Channel original movies meant Saturday evenings curled up on the couch with a ball of popcorn, escaping to futuristic worlds with “Zenon: Girl of the 21st Century” or hitting the waves of Hawaii and slopes of Vermont with “Johnny Tsunami.”
We rarely got sequels to the movies we loved. There were a few for “Zenon” and even one for “Johnny Tsunami,” but it came so many years later that I was in college, and didn’t care anymore, by the time of its release.
So even if all that’s left of the HSM franchise is another direct-to-Disney-channel movie spinoff, it just means everything’s returning to normal. Hopefully “Sharpay’s Fabulous Adventure” will entertain fans and be true to the spirit of what made HSM so popular.
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*(This image by XeniteBrazil is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License.)
