by Zach Raffio. @zachraffio.
LOS ANGELES - Disney+ has announced a spinoff of their popular original series High School Musical: The Musical: The Series, offering a true crime spin on the lighthearted song and dance series in which the students of East High School must solve a grisly murder that took place on campus, the streamer confirmed.
“The original show has been a huge hit for us, but true crime is still all the rage, so we’ve found a nice way to blend the two,” noted Kevin Mayer, Disney’s Head of Streaming, who was clearly passed up for a job in the documentary department at Netflix. “Our vibrant cast will learn to navigate their budding relationships, overcome the challenges they face at school and in their home life, and finally get to the bottom of which son of a bitch killed their beloved yet troubled cast mate, Daniel Plupp.”
Disney+ - the wildly successful, family-oriented streaming service that has made the original High School Musical spinoff series a hit - is seen by many as an odd choice for such a dark piece of content. This sentiment is echoed by those who have been given an exclusive first look at the new series.
“There are no big song and dance numbers. In fact, there are no songs at all. Just a lot of interrogation scenes and shady characters repeatedly insisting that Daniel Plupp was ‘no angel’,” noted former Disney+ subscriber and mom of seven, Kaitlyn Redge. “Then there was that scene where our charming young lead went to ask another lead to the dance, only to be interrupted by the blood curdling screams of someone finding the janitor, also murdered. We never even get to see them put on High School Musical. At least Euphoria had a good soundtrack.”
Still, some High School Musical megafans were itching to get their hands on new content.
“If the original series could inspire a song like ‘drivers license’, who knows what a sick little murder mystery on a kids channel could bring,” noted Brianne Cauldwop, honestly a little too excited. “I don’t need to know who gets cast as Chad in the musical. I need to know where Daniel went the night of callbacks, why his mother always cried when she heard 'Bop to the Top', and who threw Ms. Darbus out of a second floor window and left a note made up of clippings from the musical’s playbill spelling out ‘We’re All in Hell Together…’.”
At press time, Disney was gauging interest in other crime-adjacent spinoffs, including a WandaVision spinoff in which Wanda commits tax fraud, and a Phineas and Ferb film in which they are finally tried for violating biological, chemical and nuclear peace treaties.
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