Hunchback (Live-Action Disney)

[Ooze33]

From Deadline:

Tony-winning M. Butterfly playwright David Henry Hwang has been set by Disney to write Hunchback, a live-action musical adaptation of the Victor Hugo novel. Alan Menken and Stephen Schwartz will write the music. Mandeville is producing along with Josh Gad. I had heard that Gad, a star of the Mandeville-produced blockbuster Beauty and the Beast, might play the lead character, but insiders at the studio said no casting is solid at this point.

The new film will pull from that 1996 animated film and the Hugo novel but not the stage production that Schwartz and Menken collaborated on in Europe. David Hoberman, who runs Mandeville with Todd Lieberman, has been fixated on a live-action Hunchback for over 30 years going back to when he was Disney film president. An early attempt led to the animated film and another resulted in a limited TV series on ABC. Now it has come back around as a feature film, and while it is early and not on the Disney release calendar, Hunchback has some of the most storied players from the stage and musical realms.

I have EXTREMELY mixed feelings about this. On one hand, I adore the animated Disney film and its stage adaptation and I've wanted Disney to produce a live-action film using both for a long time now.

On the other, not using the stage adaptation seems to be such a bad decision. The song and added material fix the issues with the animated film and really push it into an epic story that would absolutely rock on the big screen if done right. Ugh. I don't know.