Lin-Manuel Miranda is to work with Oscar-winning songwriter Alan Menken on music for the live action version of ‘The Little Mermaid’.
Disney has decided to pair the creator of the Broadway musical ‘Hamilton’ with long-time Walt Disney Animation Studios collaborator Alan Menken – who has a won a total of eight Oscars during his incredible career, including Best Score and Best Song for ‘Under the Sea’, which he wrote with Howard Ashman, for his work on the original 1989 ‘Little Mermaid’ movie.
According to Deadline, the soundtrack will feature a mix of pre-existing songs from Disney’s classically animated take on Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale.
Marc Platt will produce the film with Miranda working under Sean Bailey, President of Walt Disney Studios Motion Picture Production.
Miranda is known to be a huge fan of the animated film – which tells the story of mermaid Ariel who dreams of becoming a human – and named his newborn son Sebastian after the crab character.
It was first revealed in May that Disney had selected ‘The Little Mermaid’ to be its next animation to get the live action following the release of 2010’s ‘Alice in Wonderland’, 2014’s ‘Maleficent’ – based on ‘Sleeping Beauty’ – and 2015’s ‘Cinderella’.
There is also a live action version of ‘Beauty and the Beast’ – starring Emma Watson as Belle – being released in March 2017.
Disney isn’t the only studio looking at doing something on the under the sea-style movie, Working Title has set a ‘Little Mermaid’ project of its own at Universal, Richard Curtis is working on the script and Chloe Moretz is expected to star as Ariel and up-and-coming filmmaker Rebecca Thomas is set to direct.
Miranda is also involved in another Disney project; ‘Mary Poppins Returns’ in which he stars with Emily Blunt and Meryl Streep.
Lin-Manuel Miranda to pen Little Mermaid songs
