Trailer
Plot summary
In 1924 Chicago, vaudeville star Velma Kelly is arrested for killing her husband and her sister, whom she had found in bed together. Roxie Hart, a housewife who wants a stage career, has been seeing furniture salesman Fred Casely, who told her he could introduce her to the manager of the Onyx nightclub. When Casely admits that was untrue, Roxie shoots him. Her gullible husband, Amos, agrees to take the blame at first, told that she shot a burglar in self-defense, but the police find evidence of her affair and he recants. Roxie is sent to the Cook County Jail, where District Attorney Martin Harrison says she faces hanging. There she meets Velma, who rebuffs her, and the matron, Mama Morton, who advises her to hire Velma's lawyer, Billy Flynn.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Chicago (2002)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Chicago's $306.8 million worldwide gross was, at the time, the highest of any film never to reach #1 or #2 in the weekly box office charts in North America, where it peaked at #3; it was also the highest grossing live action musical worldwide, a record then broken by Mamma Mia!.
- The musical was based on a 1926 Broadway play by Maurine Dallas Watkins, a journalist who found her inspiration in two real-life Chicago trials she had covered for the press, about the Jazz-era murderers Beulah Annan and Belva Gaertner, who became Roxie Hart and Velma Kelly.
- Michael Jackson was considered for the role of the lawyer Billy Flynn, but Harvey Weinstein heavily objected, feeling more attention would be paid to Jackson than to the rest of the cast; John Travolta was offered the role and turned it down.
- A film version of Chicago was to have been Bob Fosse's next project, as he had directed and choreographed the original 1975 Broadway production and won an Oscar for directing the film of Cabaret, but he died before realizing it; the credits carry a dedication to Fosse, his wife Gwen Verdon and producer Robert Fryer.
- The 1926 Broadway play was adapted to a silent film within a year, and Belva Gaertner, the real Jazz-era murderer behind Velma Kelly, had a cameo in it herself.
- Before Renée Zellweger was cast as Roxie Hart, the role was considered for Charlize Theron, Marisa Tomei, Christina Applegate, Mira Sorvino, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Milla Jovovich and Jennifer Aniston.
- The film won six Academy Awards in 2003, including Best Picture, making it the first musical to win Best Picture since Oliver! took the award in 1968.
- Chita Rivera appears in the film as Nickie, a prostitute; she had originated the role of Velma in the Broadway musical Chicago in 1975, and her appearance here is a cameo.
