Why A Hit Musical Will Never Grow Out Of A “Gap In The Market”
Posted on
| By
Harriet Hards
(Updated on Sep 8, 2025)
If you tried to pitch some of the world’s most famous musicals, like Hamilton, The Lion King, or Les Misérables, to someone who had never heard of them, you’d probably get some raised eyebrows. Hamilton is a hip-hop retelling of America’s founding fathers, packed with unforgettable numbers that fuse rap, R&B, and theatre. Les Misérables takes on the French Revolution (well, the failed one) through soaring ballads from some of the West End’s most iconic characters in theatre history. And The Lion King transforms a Disney classic into a stage spectacle with puppetry, rhythm, and Elton John’s iconic songs that resonate across generations.
On paper, these ideas sound risky; rap battles in 18th-century America? Singing revolutionaries? A singing lion cub? Yet these risks are exactly why the shows work. They prove that great musicals aren’t born from “filling gaps in the market,” but from pouring creativity, passion, and heart into something that feels impossible until it’s in front of an audience.
Not every experiment succeeds. A case in point is Viva Forever; as jukebox musicals flourished on stage, producers began to look for things that hadn’t been done yet. Unlike other shows, a musical about a young girl and her band with the music of the Spice Girls sounds fantastic on paper but flopped spectacularly when it actually got in front of audiences. It doesn’t matter if there’s a large group of people who will be interested in the premise of the show or if you throw millions of pounds at it, it will never amount to a hit on its own.
What you really need is a whole lot of heart and soul poured into a project and for the main focus to be on the actual show rather than the profit it might make or whether there is a target audience. If the show is good, people will come. That’s the only formula you can count on in the West End and it’s worked like that for decades.
Nobody asked for tap dancing Mormon missionaries, or rollerskating trains. Yet those bold leaps gave us theatre that changed the game.
That’s why the West End and Broadway remain so thrilling: no two shows are alike. One night you’re soaring above the Emerald City with Wicked and next you're riding a wooden boat in the Phantom’s underground lair. It’s this mix of risk, reinvention, and bold storytelling that keeps theatre alive.