Lin-Manuel Miranda: Animated Film ‘Vivo’ Sets Release Date, ‘Kingkiller Chronicle’ Finds Showrunner
Lin-Manuel Miranda is a non-stop working machine. In addition to juggling the releases of The Hamilton Mixtape and Moana, Miranda is also currently in London filming for the Mary Poppins sequel opposite Emily Blunt. This week, more good news came down the pipe for two of Miranda’s upcoming projects.
Today, Deadline Hollywood reported that Miranda will be featured as the composer of an upcoming animated film at Sony Pictures. Titled Vivo, the film will focus on “a capuchin monkey with a thirst for adventure – and a passion for music – that makes a treacherous passage from Havana to Miami to fulfill his destiny.” The film reunites Miranda with In The Heights book scribe Quiara Alegria Hudes.
The film was originally placed at DreamWorks Animation back when Miranda and Hudes first hit it big with In The Heights, but the project (as well as the Heights film adaptation) languished in Hollywood purgatory. Hamilton‘s success seems to have brought Hollywood back around to Miranda, who has reportedly already finished the 11 songs featured in the film. Sony has set a theatrical release date of December 18, 2020.
Another project Miranda is attached to is The Kingkiller Chronicle, a TV-slash-film adaptation of Patrick Rothfuss’s acclaimed fantasy novels. Miranda is serving as creative producer, and the television side of things picked up a showrunner this week in John Rogers, according to Variety.
Rogers has a few film screenplays under his belt (including The Core and early drafts of the solo Catwoman film and the first Michael Bay Transformers film), but he is better known as the co-creator and showrunner of the TNT original series Leverage and The Librarians. Miranda, meanwhile, is composing the music for the franchise in addition to his producer duties.
Miranda’s works are currently on top of the world in more ways than one. The Hamilton Mixtape debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard Top 200 music chart. Disney’s Moana, where Miranda was one of the composers and lyricists, was nominated for two Golden Globes: Best Animated Film and Best Original Song for “How Far I’ll Go.” (That same day, Disney posted the clip from the movie to their YouTube page.)
The live-action adaptation of Disney’s The Little Mermaid is also still on Miranda’s agenda, though that project is still in its earliest stages.
“I literally don’t have a title for what my job on The Little Mermaid is yet,” Miranda told Vulture in November.
The least surprising thing to happen there is for Miranda to re-arrange Alan Menken’s score from the original film. Miranda could also sign on to be in the film in some capacity, though what role he would play might depend on how he works it into his busy schedule.
With all these irons in the fire, it’s easy to imagine Miranda is frequently tuckered out. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Miranda describes himself as being in a “gleefully grateful but exhausted headspace,” as well as wearing the hat of a performer rather than a writer at the moment. Humble as always, Miranda also ruminates on how he’ll eventually write some “flops.”
“I’m going to write some things that really don’t work. I don’t know what those are — you don’t set out to do that — but I’ve been very, very lucky […] I’ve had enough to it to just know that you can’t control the outcome of something. You can only control the thing you make,” he says.
#HamiltonMixtape
2016: Me & @chancetherapper at your heartstrings like pic.twitter.com/pMInmwfZ8w— Lin-Manuel Miranda (@Lin_Manuel) December 11, 2016
But it seems no matter how many flops Lin-Manuel Miranda makes, there will always be more of his projects on the horizon.
[Featured Image by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP Images]
