High School Musical...It will never go away.

In checking my facts for my last post, I stumbled across some very unfortunate information. The High School Musical soundtrack has apparently had record-breaking sales and is a certified-platinum CD that returned to the No.1 position on the Billboard Top 200 chart a few weeks ago. Add to that the fact that this movie is the first full-length movie to be available on iTunes. Also, the guaranteed best-selling DVD is coming out late next month.

Okay, fine. People like this stupid movie, and Disney's profitting from it. Congratulations. But you can take things too far. We're looking at Disney squeezing every last penny out of this High School Musical phenomenon. They're turning the movie into a freaking touring live stage show! Filming the show from venue to venue, a concert version of the movie will appear on the Disney channel later this year accompanied by a CD recording of the concert version of the songs. Then, Disney plans to release a DVD version of the stage show that includes footage not shown on the Disney channel (putting pressure on the kids to buy the DVD).

So let's take a close look at the situation: these little kids will have seen the movie a million times on TV and they bought the soundtrack to listen to the songs. Then they pressure mom and dad into buying the DVD next month so they can watch the movie a million more times. By now, they've seen the movie 2 million times and likely know the story inside and out. Cue the tour. Now what started as a movie that the kid enjoyed has turned into the purchase of show tickets and another DVD and CD!

If that doesn't make you sick, I should mention that you can expect two sequels to High School Musical.