Lin-Manuel Miranda Shares His Experience Working With Alan Menken For Disney’s Live-Action ‘The Little Mermaid’. With high expectations set by fans for the upcoming live-action remake of Disney’s The Little Mermaid, there is no doubting Disney knew they would have to have the best composers lined up for this project! Famed Composer Alan Menken returned to rework the hit soundtrack from the animated film and co-composed new music alongside Hamilton, Encanto, and Moana composer Lin-Manuel Miranda who shared his experience working with the Disney Legend in a recent interview with Collider!
Related: Lin-Manuel Miranda Recorded a Special Video for an Absent Student’s Skeptical History Teacher
“Yeah, Alan is the reason I’m in this business,” Miranda shared with Collider, “I’m here because The Little Mermaid blew my mind. Howard Ashman and Alan Menken shaped my childhood. It took us a while to get started because I think we were both nervous to go first, to present lyrics or to present music … I learned is that Alan is maybe our greatest melodist since Richard Rogers. His doodles are better than any melody I will write in my life. But what he loves is to bounce off of something. As soon as I started writing lyrics, it wrote really fast because he’s so quick, in terms of, once he’s got his head around the style a song is, he’s got it and he’s got 50 melodies to pick and choose from. It’s like anything else, you talk until the moment is right and you understand the musical moment you’re dramatizing, and then it’s a matter of keeping up with Alan Menken because he’s fast.”
Miranda continued, “So much of my work on The Little Mermaid was that wish fulfillment. I actually didn’t write any new songs for Sebastian the Crab because I love his songs so much. I was like, ‘I can’t. Nope, not me. I can’t do it.’ I did get to write for some of the other characters in that movie. Every song you love in The Little Mermaid is still in The Little Mermaid, we just found some new moments to musicalize. That’s really tricky.”
Related: Alan Menken Shares ‘The Little Mermaid’ Will Feature New Music and Rapping
Lin-Manuel also shared he is interested in working on other Disney remake projects and shared he has some ideas for The Sword in the Stone if Disney is willing to bring him on to the project! Miranda shared in the interview, “I can tell you one of the ones that I didn’t watch so much growing up, that my kid loves is The Sword in the Stone. There’s something so incredible about when that wolf first shows up to menace Wart, I saw my kid get really scared for the first time. And then, immediately the wolf light falls down a cliff and falls on his face, and the laugh my kid let out when that happened was so delicious. It was such a lesson in tension and release and relief. So, there’s probably something fun in The Sword in the Stone to be mined. I don’t know. I’m spit-balling.”
Would you like to see Lin-Manuel Miranda stick with Disney for more music filled movies? What remakes do you think could use some new tunes? Are you excited to hear the new music from Miranda and Menken on The Little Mermaid soundtrack? We would love to hear your thoughts in the comments. Be sure to check back here at Chip and Company for updates and all things Disney!
Featured Photo Credit: ABC News
Source: Comicbook
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