Josh Gad Shares a Small Update on Disney’s Live-Action ‘Hunchback of Notre Dame’

It’s been over two years since reports came out that Disney would be working on a live-action adaptation of the Hunchback of Notre Dame. Well, thanks to Josh Gad (Beauty and the Beast), we have a small update.

Gad, who is on board the project as a producer, took to Twitter to let someone know that casting is eminent.

Now, I know the update is very brief, but this means either a director is in talks or very likely already signed on the project and then announcement could come soon, and then a casting search will soon follow. Gad was rumored to be also in consideration to play the lead role, Quasimodo.

Read: ‘Raya and the Last Dragon’ Action Inspired by ‘John Wick’ Franchise

Tony-winning M. Butterfly playwright David Henry Hwang wrote the script. Alan Menken and Stephen Schwartz (Both worked on the animated films music) will write the music for this adaptation. Mandeville is producing along with Gad.

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.