I thought I couldn”t get more stoked for a Lin-Manuel Miranda project than I already have – the news on his impending forays into Hollywood gets this Hamilton and Disney fan more and more giddy – but today I was proved wrong.
Miranda will team up with legendary Disney composer Alan Menken for a live-action Little Mermaid feature, Deadline reports and sources confirm to HitFix.
The Hamilton star will write the music for the new film along with Menken, whose composing credits for the House of Mouse's animated favorites include The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, and Tangled. Most recently he wrote music for the less family-friendly side of animation, Seth Rogen”s Sausage Party, including opening song “The Great Beyond.” Menken is also involved in the music for Disney”s live-action remake of Beauty and the Beast, set to hit theaters in March 2017.
The live-action Little Mermaid“s music will be “a mix of pre-existing songs from the 1989 Disney animated classic movie,” according to Deadline. So we”ll likely get to hear new arrangements of beloved songs like “Part of Your World” and “Under the Sea” with some Miranda flavor added to them. No word yet on whether the duo will write any new original music for the movie. Miranda is also set to “supervise the story,” though Disney will hire a writer soon.
So guys, be excited that this Ham4Ham is far from the only Miranda-Menken team-up we”ll get to see:
What makes this all the sweeter is the fact that Miranda is a hardcore Little Mermaid fan – he named his Sebastian son after the music maestro crab.
I haven”t been thrilled about Disney”s endeavor to do live-action remakes of a slew of their animated classics; I”d rather see the studio put more of its budget into original projects. But that”s not the way Hollywood works today. Luckily, Miranda goes a long way in getting me on board with re-dos of Mary Poppins and Little Mermaid.