Glee wasn’t the only successful on-screen musical of its time, and it may have taken its cue from another popular musical about singing high schoolers.
In the early 2000s, musical movies like High School Musical began gaining traction with young viewers, spurring the creation of even more on-screen musicals, perhaps even including Ryan Murphy's Glee. Starting in 2009 and running for six seasons, Glee followed a group of eccentric high schoolers as they joined their school's acapella group and learned to accept and understand each other despite their differences. The show was best known for its impressive musical numbers and themed episodes where certain musical artists or shows were honored from Britney Spears to Grease.
Three years before Glee became a global phenomenon, a strikingly similar movie musical, High School Musical, first captured the attention of young audiences. High School Musical is a 2006 film produced by Disney Channel which told the story of a basketball player and a science nerd who bond over their love of music. The movie featured original music and classic character archetypes including Sharpay Evan's (and Rachel Berry's) diva. Most importantly, High School Musical had the overarching theme that people with different interests and passions can still create a loving community.
Despite the clear similarities between the two, Glee creators asserted that their show took zero inspiration from High School Musical. Per The LA Times, Glee's co-creator and executive producer Brad Falchuk said that most of their team had never even seen the Disney film. He went on to point out that Glee was much more edgy and adult than High School Musical and that they weren't purposely trying to cash in on the film's success.
The same ideas were espoused by Ryan Murphy as well in an interview with The New York Times. Murphy claimed that Glee was not the same as High School Musical and that he hadn't even seen the Disney Channel hit. Like Falchuk, he explained how they worked to make Glee stand apart from other on-screen musicals. For example, both Falchuk and Murphy described how they didn't want Glee to be a traditional musical where characters randomly break out into song. In this way, Murphy put a decisive line between his series and High School Musical.
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