A now-beloved flop that Christian Bale regrets starring in

Time for a quick history lesson! In 1899, a newspapermen’s strike took place in New York for two weeks. The strikers demanded higher wages for the newsboys, who provided a share of sales during the day and evening but ended up earning next to nothing. Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst’s newspapers were shut down at this time, and the strike eventually won/worked in favor of the newsboys, although other demands had to be met in a compromise.

The impact of the event was so moving that Disney made a movie musical — Newsies — inspired by the strike in 1992, with Kenny Ortega (“High School Musical” trilogy, “Hocus Pocus”) directing the project. Young Christian Bale played hitman Jack “Cowboy” Kellyand composer Alan Menken, who has scored nearly every Disney animated film you know and love, wrote 12 original songs for this beloved film. However, despite these promising elements, the film failed to make it into theaters as The News completely failed to recoup its $15 million budget and became a box office failure that cost the Mouse House millions of dollars. However, that didn’t stop the film from eventually becoming a cult classic and later being adapted into a Broadway classic.

To add insult to injury, The Razzies (which apparently shouldn’t exist) named “Newsies” the worst song of the year around the same time that Mencken and his close collaborator, the late Howard Ashman, won an Oscar for Best Song for “Beauty and the Beast.” i mean of course The News Is Not West Side Storybut Mencken’s score contains some timeless tricks and infuses the high-energy narrative with the appropriate level of adrenaline necessary to underpin the theme of rebellion.

Moreover, the failure of “Navinak” affected the young team. For example, it caused complicated feelings for Bale, who regrets that he starred in a musical at such a tender age.

Bale’s big break as a child came as an actor in Steven Spielberg’s war drama Empire of the Sun. in which he was only 13. Although it helped establish him, his first major project after Empire (as the lead) was The News, which was not only a commercial disaster, but no a critical darling by any stretch of the imagination. While most reviews praised Bale’s ability to shine in what critics saw as a lackluster film, the actor admitted, Entertainment Weekly in 2007 that he had mixed feelings about the musical:

“At the age of 17, you want to be taken very seriously – you don’t want to do a musical (…) Time has healed these wounds. But it took a while.”

Part of Bale’s difficult feelings about The New Ones may have stemmed from the fact that the actor signed on before the musical numbers were added, as the film was not supposed to be a musical until Ortega was involved. Moreover, both Bale and David Moscow, who plays David Jacobs in the film, were not trained performers, adding to the challenge of balancing the musical component with convincing performances that didn’t betray that inexperience.

To make matters worse, the filming process for “News” was a constant uphill battle, thanks to behind-the-scenes factors that led to budget constraints, scripts were constantly being rewritten, and the crew was forced to meet tight deadlines. Moreover, the death of the legendary Howard Ashmanwho was to work on the score with Mencken, cast a shadow of sadness that has survived. (Jack Feldman, whom Mencken met at a musical theater workshop, helped him with the songwriting process instead.)

Still, “Newsies” has an unforgettable legacy today, and its flaws don’t stop it from becoming a pro-union anthem with an unwavering core message.