Yeah but the Chicago movie had Richard Gere, Rene Zellwiger and Catherine Zeta Jones all right around peak popularity. And it didn’t have the baggage WSS had, because it was niche. Everybody conceptually knows WSS. It has name recognition without necessarily having popularity or draw. It’s very much in the “that thing my mom/grandma liked”. While Chicago got to come in fresh really. It had never been the cultural landmark WSS was. I doubt more than a dozen people who saw the 2002 film had seen the 1927 film, and I doubt most had seen any of the stage versions. So it got to come in as a “new” movie. WSS can never do that. Any new rendition of WSS, even the various Broadway revivals, has to drag the past with it, and is automatically limited to a largely nostalgic audience.
But the new WSS has Ansel Elgort and Rachel Zegler! Both at the peak of their...:) Interesting that “Chicago” was nostalgic *by design* when it was written in the ‘70s. WSS was cutting edge as far as Broadway musicals were concerned. It was considered difficult and discordant.