The #1 spot for finding one of the largest selections of High School 3 merchandise available, in addition to High School Musical 4 auditions and open casting call information.
High School Musical 4 pre-production has begun and the open casting calls and auditions for dancers, actors, and extras will be posted here as soon as they are available.
Disney Channel 3800 W Alameda Ave Burbank, CA 91505
Filming Locations:
East High School 840 S 1300 E Salt Lake City Utah USA
Various locations in Salt Lake City, Utah.
Executive Producers: Bill Borden, Barry Rosenbush
Director: Kenny Ortega
Starring:
Matt Prokop - Jimmy 'The Rocket' Zara Jemma McKenzie-Brown - Tiara Bart Johnson - Coach Jack Bolton Justin Martin - Donny Fox
Story:
In HSM 4, Tiara, Donny, and The Rocket are back in School for a whole new storyline for East High School. Every musical has an ending, and every ending is a new beginning for The Wildcats!
Walt Disney Company's highly anticipated "High School Musical 3: Senior Year" hits movie theaters around the globe next week on October 22, with bumper advance ticket sales and plans to keep the $1 billion-plus franchise red-hot with a fourth film.
Disney is considering releasing High School Musical 4 in theaters worldwide. Earlier it was announced that HSM4 would be released as a Disney Channel Original Movie, as the first two installments of the HSM franchise were.
The company has not yet had contract discussions with the actors for a fourth film, set for release in 2010, although it likely will be without Efron and Hudgens and some other key principals.
But Ross said Disney was "very bullish that there is a lot more story to tell about East High. We are going to focus on the new story and the characters and we will go from there."
Disney will factor in more than just box office in deciding whether "High School Musical 4" returns to its cable TV origins or joins big movie franchises like "Pirates of the Caribbean," "The Chronicles of Narnia" and "National Treasure," Ross said.
Disney is not too worried that a wholesale cast change will dampen children's devotion to the fictional New Mexico high school because, like the original cast, the "tween" audience is growing up and a new group of young fans awaits.
"I think this franchise is stronger than the individual characters themselves, not that they haven't been hugely popular," said Robert Thompson, professor of television and popular culture at Syracuse University.
"The universe that has been created clearly isn't one that they can populate with the same characters. They grow up."
But Disney sees no reason to retire a property that produced $100 million in operating profit in its first 18 months and stands to produce a similar amount in fiscal 2008 alone.
The hugely popular High School Musical films are set in New Mexico, any fan knows that. But when filmmakers went looking for the perfect real-life high school to serve as the fictional East High, they found exactly what they wanted not in New Mexico but in Utah. All three of the HSM films were shot at East High in Salt Lake City.
East High’s 2,000 student population was still in class when production of HSM3 got underway last May. The cast had five weeks’ rehearsal, they had only two weeks in the previous two. The shoot ran to 45 days (24 for the previous two), and there are 2,500 extras in one of the film’s opening sequences.
It’s all a far cry from the first HSM when a rooftop scene was simply cut short because of a thunderstorm, and HSM2 when the props department painted a black grand piano white so it could be used in different scenes.
But still, this filming was far from Hollywood excess. None of the cast had a fancy trailer and at lunch, they all lined up with the crew. No personal chefs around here. Teen idol Efron rode, not a limo, but a minibus he’d happily share with any crew needing a lift back to the hotel.
“I don’t care about outdoing ourselves on this film, I’m not worried about being bigger and better,” says producer Bill Borden. “The point is to stay true to the spirit of the first two films, though of course, there are certain things that make sense when you’re making a film for cinema. We have a few more dancers; more money to spend on sets, that sort of thing.”
In the first film, when Gabriella and Troy were in the East High theater, there was a moon hanging behind them, which was all we could afford. Now we have sets with things that move in from the wings, things that fly up, more like Broadway.”
More amazing than any of that, however, is how a modest cable movie spawned an industry of sequels, hit albums, stage shows, merchandising and fan hysteria.
For Kenny Ortega, the franchise's director and creative force, who hasn't done a feature since 1993's "Hocus Pocus," working on a theatrical film was "a dream come true."
"Knowing that we had a little more time to shoot it and a little bit bigger of a budget to imagine it, I looked back at my own days of high school and how we aspired to be like the greats," Ortega said. "When I saw 'West Side Story,' I was convinced I was George Chakiris, and all that I wanted to do was put on a pair of black tight jeans and a purple shirt and dance the night away. In high school, especially kids in musical theatre, they look to Broadway, and look to movies, and that's where they get their excitement and inspiration from. So as I imagined the first two movies, and especially the third one, I looked into my backyard and wanted to bring the same fun to this high school."
What happens next? Our lips are zipped.
Will the Wildcats win another championship? Will Sharpay stop behaving like a diva? Will HSM3 take the big-screen by storm?
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