Press Archive

Chucky Klapow choreographed the dance moves for “High School Musical 3: Senior Year,” scheduled for release in theaters in October. He gave us a sneak peek behind the curtain of the surefire box-office hit: On Vanessa Hudgens (Gabriella): “Vanessa is the most naturally gifted in picking up the new moves.

“Things come really easily for her, so she gets lazy with it because she has to wait for the others to catch on. I have to be like, ‘Vanessa, let’s get working here.’”

On Corbin Bleu (Chad): “Corbin is also a gifted dancer, and he comes from a performing arts background, so he picks things up fast.”

On raising the bar: “We only had 10 full days of dancing rehearsal for the first film — I have no idea how we actually did it! The second movie we took three weeks to do the dancing, and right now we are in the middle of five full weeks of dance rehearsal. This cast is so dedicated and talented. We all raised the bar for ‘HSM 2,’ now we need to go back to that iconic, basic movement that made the first movie so great.”

People.com: All six of the High School Musical stars have officially signed on for High School Musical 3: Senior Year, Walt Disney Studios Motion Picture Productions announced Monday.

Zac Efron, Vanessa Hudgens, Ashley Tisdale, Corbin Bleu, Monique Coleman and Lucas Grabeel will star in the third and final installment, a feature film. The first two movies aired to a record number of viewers on The Disney Channel.

Director Kenny Ortega tells PEOPLE he’s excited about working one last time with the cast, a group of virtually unknown actors before the first HSM movie’s January 2006 debut.

“I am the luckiest guy in the world and I know it,” Ortega says. “This will be our last time together and I love working with these kids so much. It’s going to be great.”

Tisdale, who will reprise her role as school diva Sharpay, says she looks forward to returning to East High set in Utah one last time.

“I’m excited,” Tisdale tells PEOPLE. “But it’s going to be sad. It seems like it will be graduation and I’ll be crying while we’re filming.”

According to the studio, HSM 3: Senior Year finds high school seniors Troy [Efron] and Gabriella [Hudgens] facing the prospect of being separated from one another as they head off in different directions to college. Joined by the rest of the Wildcat crew, they stage an elaborate spring musical reflecting their experiences, hopes and fears about their future.

—————————————-
EOnline.com: It’s official. These High Schoolers are matriculating to the megaplex.Production on High School Musical 3: Senior Year, the first big-screen installment of the smash-hit Disney franchise, is expected to kick off this spring with the entire cast intact, Walt Disney Studios announced Monday.

So, apparently, the pending money matters have been settled and image issues addressed since the wait-and-see period following the record-breaking premiere of HSM2 in August, during which it was unclear whether Disney would rehire Vanessa Hudgens or shell out big bucks for Zac Efron, whose asking price went way up after he became Hollywood’s next big thing.

In September, the Disney Channel refused to comment on Hudgens’ future with the franchise after a few underage nude self-portraits the 19-year-old took for a boyfriend hit the Internet. Her surprisingly scandalous behavior set fan sites ablaze for awhile, but, as is frequently the case, the chatter died down and the actress was back in business a month later.

Efron inked a reported $3 million deal in November to return as Troy Bolton for the theatrical sequel, while Hudgens and Ashley Tisdale were also said to have received pay hikes, although they wouldn’t dish on the exact dollar amount.

Corbin Bleu, Monique Coleman and Lucas Grabeel will also be heading back to East High for their senior year, and director Kenny Ortega will once again helm the song-and-dance action.

“We’re thrilled to have all of the talented cast members who helped to make High School Musical such an incredible phenomenon joining us for this big screen motion picture event,” Oren Aviv, president of motion picture production for Disney, said in a statement.

The threequel will “take these popular characters in some intriguing and entertaining new directions,” Aviv continued. “Clearly, the music, spirit and personalities in these films have touched audiences in a very special way, and this latest musical adventure delivers lots of great new entertainment on an even grander scale.”

The films, seen by more than 250 million people around the world, have certainly touched people’s wallets. The HSM soundtrack was the top-selling album of 2006, and Josh Groban’s Noël was the only album keeping HSM2’s tunes from the top spot last year.

The tween-friendly saga has also spawned a book series, a concert tour, videogames, an ice show and a well-received stage musical.

HSM3: Senior Year will find Troy and Gabriella stressing out over their impending separation once graduation sends everybody on their merry ways. Sure enough, East High’s senior class will stage one last musical “reflecting their experiences, hopes and fears about the future,” according to the studio’s plot synopsis.

—————————————-
ExtraTV.com: News that the entire cast of “High School Musical” will be back for the third installment is old news to “Extra!”Though Disney officially announced yesterday that the cast has signed on for “HSM: 3,” due in theaters in October, “Extra” broke the news back in November.

Ashley Tisdale even filled us in on the “HSM: 3″ schedule in this story.

“We’ll rehearse in February and start filming in March,” Tisdale told “Extra” at the American Music Awards.

Who’s in It: Nikki Blonsky, John Travolta, Queen Latifah, Amanda Bynes, Christopher Walken, Zac Efron, Elijah Kelley, Michelle Pfeiffer, Brittany Snow The Basics: Is there anyone who doesn’t already know what this is about? An exuberant chubby girl in early 1960s Baltimore sings and dances her way to TV racial integration and love with the boy of her dreams. And as a plus-size person myself, I’m just on board with any movie where fat people are the heroes, even if one of them is Travolta in big-lady drag.

What’s the Deal? In the world of movies based on Broadway musicals that are in turn based on earlier non-musicals, this one is the best. Of course, its only competition is The Producers and that early 1970s Lucille Ball-starring Mame (and they both sucked bad), but this one is still a blast. It helps that the music has more in common with actual ’60s pop songs than with the kind of songs they tend to write for contemporary Broadway musicals. Of course, now all you Spring Awakening fans are going to write in and tell me how horrible I am.

I Know It Seems Impossible: But hack director Adam Shankman doesn’t destroy this material. I think it’s too strong and joyful to be ruined, no matter how bad of a filmmaker they threw at it. It’s like he decided to just focus more on choreography (his first career) than on making tons of wrong-headed directorial decisions. So I think he should only direct movies with lots of singing and dancing from now on, even if he still isn’t perfect at showcasing all that choreography. It beats The Pacifier any day.

I Know It Seems Impossible, Part II: But Travolta doesn’t destroy this material. He’s got to be the laziest actor alive right now, but when he puts on the big-lady outfit, it’s like it swallows the worst version of him whole. You can see him trying to be a non-drag Edna, even when he garbles the dialogue until you can’t understand him (he’s the only one affecting a bizarre version of the unique Baltimore dialect), and even when he does anachronistic-African-American-woman-on-The Rikki Lake Show gestures. He seems as though he’s actually submitting to being directed.

One Star Born, Another Makes a Cameo: Young Nikki Blonsky is like this year’s Jennifer Hudson, the first-timer going for broke and making you love her in the first 10 seconds she’s onscreen. The whole thing hinges on that, and she takes it and runs. Meanwhile, speaking of Rikki Lake, be on the lookout for original the Hairspray star in a cameo as a William Morris agent in the finale.

Chicago Sun-Times	3½ stars/4	“… just plain fun.”
Entertainment Weekly	A-	“… a fizzy and delirious high-camp message-movie musical that may just turn out to be the happiest movie of the summer.”
Hollywood Reporter	N/A	“… appealingly goofy …”
Los Angeles Times	N/A	“… happy, healthy and attractive …”
New York Post	4 stars/4	“… the best and most entertaining movie adaptation of a stage musical so far this century …”
New York Times	N/A	“… so joyful, so full of unforced enthusiasm, that only the most ferocious cynic could resist it.”
Premiere	3 stars/4	“… a lot of fun — colorful, sassy, and brisk.”
TV Guide	3 stars/4	“… so cute, sugary, bubbly and eager to please that its essential blandness could almost go unnoticed.”
Variety	N/A	“… one of the best Broadway-tuner adaptations in recent years …”

Welcome to Press Archive! We have provided you any reviews, magazine articles, online articles etc.