In 2021, we’re only doing movie musicals apparently. Amazon has announced today that it will release its film adaptation of the 2017 hit West End musical Everybody’s Talking About Jamie on September 17. That’s just a week before the release of another musical about a misfit teenager with a notable wig, Dear Evan Hansen, a few months after the premiere of In the Heights, and a couple months before the December drop of West Side Story. Along the way, there will also be Tick, Tick … Boom!, whatever mysterious European things are going on with Annette, and two different Lin-Manuel Miranda animated musicals. If the thought of all that at once overwhelms you, just take a beat, and siiiiiiing out your feelings.
In the grand tradition of your Cage aux Folles, your Priscilla: Queen of the Desert, your Kinky Boots, Everybody’s Talking About Jamie combines the two great tastes that taste together: drag and musical numbers. The story follows 16-year-old Jamie New, a bullied high schooler with drag-queen ambitions, played by newcomer Max Harwood. The trailer for Jamie looks like a queerer Billy Elliot, as the titular British teen defies disapproving adults and closed-minded peers to do the thing he loves, rigid gender norms be damned. Sharon Horgan plays teacher Miss Hedge, and Richard E. Grant plays a drag queen named Loco Chanelle, which, what more could you possibly ask for? The film was originally set to be released in theaters in February 2021, through 20th Century Studios, as seen in the trailer below, but COVID-related complications pushed it back and onto Amazon this fall.
