Over a year ago Alan Menken had teased that Disney was developing a live-action adaptation of The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Now, the film is moving forward in development.
According to Deadline, Tony-winning M. Butterfly playwright David Henry Hwang has been set by Disney to write the film.
Alan Menken and Stephen Schwartz (Both worked on the animated films music) will write the music for this adaptation. Mandeville is producing along with Beauty and the Beast and Frozen star Josh Gad. Gad is also rumored for the lead role of Quasimodo, but as of now no casting is solid now.
Released in 1996, Disney’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame, The film follows Quasimodo, the misshapen but gentle-souled bell ringer of Notre Dame, who was nearly killed as a baby by Claude Frollo, the Minister of Justice. But Frollo was forced by the Archdeacon of Notre Dame to raise Quasimodo as his own. Now a young man, Quasimodo is hidden from the world by Frollo in the belltower of the cathedral. But during the Festival of Fools, Quasimodo, cheered on by his gargoyle friends Victor, Hugo, and Laverne, decides to take part in the festivities, where he meets the lovely gypsy girl Esmeralda and the handsome soldier Phoebus. The three of them find themselves ranged against Frollo’s cruelty and his attempts to destroy the home of the gypsies, the Court of Miracles. And Quasimodo must desperately defend both Esmeralda and the very cathedral of Notre Dame.
Source: Deadline
Zach Kenny
January 16, 2019 at 5:55 pm
This is probably gonna clash with that adaptation Idris Elba is directing & starring in, isn’t it (like TJB 2016 and Andy Serkis’ Mowgli)? If this does happen, I hope they go the route of the stage musical where it was more faithful to the book, even with some changes. It’s interesting that they might be going with Josh for Quasi (I guess it makes sense for the usual “actor who appeared in one live-action remake plays a different character in another remake” that’s been happening), but I’d rather see either Sean Astin or Eddie Redmayne.