Billing Displacement: Played straight then subverted. Initially, Robert Duvall and Ann-Margret were given top billing on the posters and video release covers. Years later, after Christian Bale became a star as an adult, he received top billing on the Blu-ray release.
Christian Bale hated working on the film, and swore he'd never do another musical. He is at least respectful of the film's cult audience, stating that "saying something negative about Newsies means there's an awful lot of people you have to answer to." It's something that would garner more just an embarrassed look than actual outrage (he even once briefly sang the "Santa Fe" refrain during an interview for The Dark Knight Rises). He did do a voice in Pocahontas three years later (also for Disney), but his character didn’t sing in that movie.
It was an acknowledgment that Newsies was a big fat flop, and isn’t that funny? It was not a particularly great song. It was “High Times, Hard Times,” the one that had Ann-Margret on the swing. [laughs] We did end up cutting the song [from the stage adaptation of Newsies].
Dawson Casting: Some of the teens in the film are played by grown men. Justified in that the dancing is too strenuous for the average teenager, especially if they haven't been taking dance classes since a very young age.
Indeed, the trope even applies in the movie itself: the Newsies only go on strike because Pulitzer decided to raise the cost of papers for the Newsies without raising the cost for the consumers.
Gay Panic: The film gives the main character a very blatantly token love interest in a film that's otherwise boiling over with homoerotic subtext between all the males.
Genre-Killer: Of sorts. It was the studio's first live-action musical since Pete's Dragon (1977), which itself killed the genre 15 years earlier. Unfortunately, this one did even worse, and the genre remained dead for another 15 years, until Enchanted.
Throw It In!: Oscar Delancey's actor had no idea he was on camera for the scene where Blink's ranting about the price hike, he was just mocking Trey Parker. The director decided to keep it.
What Could Have Been: The original script for the movie, titled Hard Promises, wasn't a musical and was significantly darker than the finished product, with Jack having a dead brother who was crushed to death escaping the Refuge and who he occasionally confuses with Les, Davey's family being ashamed of him striking to the point he decides to move out, Jack actually taking the train to Santa Fe, and Crutchie still stuck in the Refuge by the end.
The Musical
Dawson Casting: Several of the stage cast are considerably older than the ages of their characters. Jeremy Jordan and Andrew Keenan-Bolger, who respectively played the 17-year-old Jack Kelly and 15-year-old Crutchie in the original Broadway run, were at the time both in their late 20s.
Filmed Stage Production: The musical was filmed for a limited theatrical release in 2017, and was later made available on Disney+.
Sleeper Hit: The original plan was to just license out a stage version for schools and communities to perform, with a short run production at Papermill Playhouse to kick it off. However, the show quickly sold out and was acclaimed by critics so they decided to take it to Broadway for a limited run. Then it happened again so it was extended to an open run that lasted for two years.
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