It seems Disney had very ambitious plans for a potential High School Musical 4 at one point. Disney is a Hollywood empire that is home to some truly incredible film franchises such as Star Wars, Marvel, and more. Although a lot of those are acquired IP, there are some great homegrown franchises under the Disney umbrella. Maybe one of the most unlikely is High School Musical, a film trilogy that got its start on Disney Channel, but concluded with a theatrical film with an extremely high production value. It was very well regarded, and many assumed Disney would keep things going with the main cast going to college, but that never happened.
The franchise continued in a strange, meta way with High School Musical: The Musical: The Series, a Disney+ series which took place at East High, where the movies were filmed. It wasn’t a sequel or even really a spin-off, as it doesn’t actually take place in the universe of the films. In fact, some of the actors from the films appeared in the show as themselves, acknowledging that they played characters in the films. With that said, there were once plans for High School Musical 4.
Speaking on the Get Your Head in the Game podcast, stars Bart Johnson (Coach Bolton) and Jemma McKenzie-Brown (Tiara Gold) recounted plans for more High School Musical films. Johnson noted that he was aware of plans for a whole new trilogy that would focus on McKenzie-Brown’s character becoming one of the main characters as the original characters moved on. Disney would’ve once again returned the High School Musical series to Disney Channel for High School Musical 4 and 5, but would’ve concluded things with another theatrical film.
Jemma McKenzie-Brown spoke about how she was clued into this as she was contracted for multiple sequels, which required her to be strategic with the projects she took on after High School Musical 3. She noted that her agent told her that this wasn’t something that was offered to actors like Zac Efron and Vanessa Hudgens when they made the first High School Musical, so this indicated that Disney had a serious plan in mind.
It’s not entirely clear why these films never happened. It’s entirely possible that Disney lost interest after realizing it would need to recapture the magic with a whole new cast of fresh faces, something that would’ve been pretty difficult. Actors like Zac Efron have moved on from High School Musical and created massive careers, but perhaps one day, Disney will try to revive the series with the actors when they have their own high school-aged kids.
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