Margot Robbie and Colin Farrell have been spending plenty of time together promoting their new fantasy romance A Big Bold Beautiful Journey, which will soon hit the 2025 movie schedule, and the Barbie star couldn’t help but rave about a certain side of her co-star that the world needs to see more of: his hidden song-and-dance skills. Comparisons to High School Musical and Zac Efron were made, and I cannot get enough.
In a recent chat shared on Fandango’s Instagram, Robbie may have given the world the most unexpected crossover compliment of the year. She explained:
I was like, ‘Why has he not done a musical?’ I don’t understand how this is. He’s sung in films before, like in… Crazy Heart. But this is like full High School Musical vibes. He does a dance and he sings, and he’s unbelievably good. And the world just needs to know that Colin Farrell can sing and dance.
The interviewer didn’t miss a beat, chiming in and saying, “The new Zac Efron right here,” to which the Harley Quinn actress quickly responded:
Exactly.
Farrell acending to become the “new Zac Efron” probably wasn’t on anyone’s 2025 bingo card, but it’s a revelation all the same. Best known for his brooding performances in The Banshees of Inisherin and nearly unrecognizable as Oz, a.k.a. The Penguin, in The Batman and his Emmy-nominated Penguin miniseries (available with an HBO Max subscription), Farrell has never exactly been pitched as a Broadway-style song-and-dance man. Margot Robbie insists that might be a misread, however, and she seems genuinely convinced audiences will be blown away once they see him cut loose.
Of course, it wouldn’t be the first time Farrell has defied expectations. He earned an Oscar nomination for Banshees, carried action-heavy blockbusters like Miami Vice, and even lent his voice to family-friendly fare such as Dumbo. So while a full-blown musical number may sound improbable, with a co-star as enthusiastic as The Birds of Prey star vouching for him, it suddenly feels like the most inevitable twist in his already eclectic career.
For the moment, audiences will have to content themselves with Farrell’s next big swing in the world of romantic fantasy. He and Robbie share the screen in Kogonada’s A Big Bold Beautiful Journey, a film that kicks off with a chance meeting at a wedding and then veers into the extraordinary. According to the film’s synopsis, the two characters find themselves revisiting pivotal memories from their pasts—moments that shaped who they are now—and maybe, just maybe, discovering a way to reshape what lies ahead.
Colin Farrell may not be headlining High School Musical 4 anytime soon, but the “new Zac Efron” can be seen sharing the screen alongside Margot Robbie in A Big Bold Beautiful Journey when it hits theaters on Friday, September 19.
