8 Actors We’d Love to See Do a Movie Musical

From Tom Holland to Channing Tatum, here are eight actors we would love to see do a movie musical one day.

The movie musical: a genre that used to hold intense gravitas and importance in the film diet, but now stands as a sort of underrepresented and undervalued trapping of the modern IP glut. Movie stars and up-and-comers alike would flock to doing a big, Hollywood musical in order to take their careers to the next level. Nowadays, movie musicals often don't even register as event films to the public. Increasingly, people deign to call movie musicals "unrealistic" or "melodramatic," citing the fact that people spontaneously burst out into song to be some type of demarcation on the films quality.

Fortunately for those of us in the know, that isn't an issue that holds any real weight. Movie musicals are like a performer's playground. It opens up a consummate creative to the possibility of doing it all: singing, dancing, acting, and — the real hard part — selling it. To see if an actor or actress really has the juice, putting them at the front of a movie musical will be the truest test of might. In that spirit, here are eight actors that we would love to see lead a movie musical soon.

With a Fred Astaire biopic on the docket, we may end up seeing what he's capable of as a musical performer in due time, but it's high time we saw what Tom Holland can do as the lead in a full-on musical. He's enraptured audiences for years now with his nimble and light physical presence as a performer, while his affable and boyish charm make him an endearing lead in pictures.

Where his career has been sort of disappointingly mediocre outside the MCU, there is ample room for a big, showy performance in stage musical adaptation or something of the sort. We've all seen the clip of him on Lip Sync Battles, so its clear the guy has a certain voracity for the pomp and circumstance of the stage. His experience in London's theater scene as the title role in Billy Elliott only solidifies that Holland needs to get his song and dance on sooner rather than later.

Related: 10 Broadway Musicals That Would Make for Great Film Adaptations

One of the most exciting and well-regarded talents to arrive on the scene in the last few years, Florence Pugh has taken a whole heap of people hostage with her alluring film performances and down-to-earth online persona. Turning in career-defining performances in films like Midsommar, Little Women, and (potentially) Dune: Part Two, Pugh has really made a name for herself as one of the steadiest hands in the business working right now.

Even when the surrounding film doesn't quite work, it's hard to really say that the onus is on her at all. What would really launch Pugh into the stratosphere would be a big, flashy performance in a movie musical that gives the room to be as acerbic and strong-willed as she is in her best parts, while maintaining the affability and personability of her public persona.

Name a more electric on-screen presence in the last decade than the incomparable Lupita Nyong'o. While her number of roles in the last few years have been lesser than many would hope, each and every time she turns up on screen it is a gift to the movie-going public. Landmark roles in films like 12 Years A Slave and Us have cemented Nyong'o as one of those people who can literally never give a bad performance.

The question might still remain: why her for a movie musical? The short and simple of it is that Nyong'o has proven she can give the same level of tact on the stage as she can on the screen, which gives her an edge over a great deal of the stars on this list. Her physicality as a performer is tenacious, which makes us think that she can more than handle a huge movie musical being put on her shoulders.

The absolutely stunning breakout performance of 2022 was Keke Palmer in Jordan Peele's Nope, a fact that has only been emboldened by her continued climb up the social ladder of Hollywood in the time since. Everyone was so immediately endeared to her as soon as she appeared on-screen that a collective cry to give her more roles rang out across the internet.

What would really take advantage of Palmer's almost infectious charisma wouldn't be another conventional star vehicle in our day — something like a comic book movie or straight-to-streaming action comedy. No, what would really put her skills on display would be a movie musical on the scale of the best and biggest. Her talents should be given the largest stage on the biggest screen with the biggest budget, which is essentially tantamount to a movie musical from back in the day.

Related: Here Are 10 Essential Movies About Music

This one sort of speaks for itself, doesn't it? We've all collectively been in awe of what Donald Glover has been able to accomplish in the years since he broke out onto the scene as Troy Barnes in Community (and as Childish Gambino on the music side of things). One of the most accomplished and well-regarded mutli-hyphenates of the 2010s, Glover is coming hot off the heels of finishing off his run as creator and lead of TV show Atlanta, which opens him up to a world of possibilities.

We all are wondering what that next step might be for Glover, but we have the answer already. Put Glover at the center of a movie musical and just let him run buckwild. Allow him to make something as surreal and all around insane as those last couple seasons of Atlanta, but let the talents as an actor and as a musician fuse into one. We want more music from him as much as we want more performances, so just get it all out at the same time.

The biggest star to the come out of the Harry Potter franchise who has continued to cut his teeth on independent oddities and leading roles in outsider films, Daniel Radcliffe has made a career out of defying expectations. Very few expected the kid actor playing Harry Potter to be anything other than a flash in the pan movie star, but he's made it his goal to really go out and do the work.

Between appearances in Swiss Army Man, Horns, The Lost City, and many others, Radcliffe has made it known that he always commits 100% to whatever role he's taken on. Were he to bring that level of dedication to something like a big-budget movie musical, the results would be incredibly fruitful for all involved. He's already proven with his performance in Weird: The Al Yankovic Story that he can carry a musical-adjacent part, so let's allow him to really run wild with it.

From Twilight to Cosmopolis to The Lighthouse to The Batman, Robert Pattinson has spent the entirety of his career proving that he can do anything with whatever role he's been given. Once the ire of any and all online film commenter, Pattinson has been building a filmography of genuinely dynamic and exciting performances that any actor would be jealous to have.

As if working with David Cronenberg and the Safdie Brothers wasn't enough street cred, his bombshell performances in films like The Lighthouse and Lost City of Z cemented him as a performer worth keeping an eye on. At this point, its sort of pointless to ask what this guy can't do — especially after he nailed it in The Batman. But, if there is one true test of a performers' strength (as we've already stated), it is the movie musical. We need to see what Pattinson can do with big numbers and strong choreography.

And, finally, we have to give a shout-out to Magic Mike himself. If there's any performer on this list that has unequivocally proven they have the goods to carry something like a movie musical it would have to be Channing Tatum. His experience as a stripper and dancer gives a certain leg up on the rest of the talent on this list, as well as his unbelievable on-screen charisma.

His himbo status might make him seem like too ineffectual or goofy to play the pomp and circumstance of musical lead, but anyone who's seen his performances in the Magic Mike series or Dog can attest to his ability to play all corners of a performance. Tatum's physical abilities as a performer are storied and given ample screen time in a lot of his films, so his potential in a screen musical would be intensely high.

Luccas Hallow is a writer and graduate of Indiana University Bloomington, where he studied media, advertising, and media psychology. His one true love in the world is film, which he expresses by being an avid collector of Blu-rays. Outside of writing for MovieWeb, Luccas also works as a content writer and specialist. You can find him reading about film history, sipping on coffee, or listening to something in his record collection otherwise.