High School Musical turns 15: A look back at the humble origins of Disney Channel’s billion-dollar franchise – 9TheFIX

In the early aughts, Kenny Ortega had directed a string of Ally McBeal and Gilmore Girls episodes, but what he really wanted was to return to making movies.
So he asked his agents to keep an eye out for a TV movie, something “under the radar” that would allow him to quietly flex his filmmaking chops as he slid behind the camera for his first feature since 1993’s Hocus Pocus. (And before that, he’d directed another cult Disney favourite, the 1992 musical Newsies.)
High School Musical turns 15 years…

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