It seems the film industry is really running out of ideas. With all the remakes and sequels being released these days, there are hardly any original movies still being made. Disney is among the film companies laying on the remakes thick. This year alone, fans can expect to see a live-action remake of Dumbo , Aladdin , The Lion King , and Lady and the Tramp .
Disney has just announced another remake in the works. The Hunchback of Notre Dame is also set to get a live-action remake, according to a report by Comic Book .
Tony-winning playwright David Henry Hwang has apparently been hired to write the screenplay for the film. Alan Menken and Stephen Schwartz will be dealing with the musical side of things. Schwartz was actually the composer who wrote the score for the original Hunchback film.
Josh Gad will be one of the producers working on the project, along with Mandeville. No official casting announcements have been made as yet, but there are also whispers that Gad might be taking on the lead role of the hunchback himself, Quasimodo.
Even though the movie hasn’t got a cast yet, those who are involved are an incredible, award-winning bunch with 11 Oscars, not to mention a whole host of other awards, between them.
Disney working on live-action remake of Hunchback of Notre Dame https://t.co/wIdxK2tywL
— Entertainment Weekly (@EW) January 16, 2019
Although no script has been finalized as yet, Deadline reports that the story will follow that of the original animation rather than the stage production on which both Schwartz and Menken worked.
The story of the Hunchback of Notre Dame was originally written by French author Victor Hugo, the same man responsible for another well known heart-wrenching tale set in Paris, Les Miserables .
Set in 1480’s in the French capital, the Hunchback of Notre Dame tells the tragic tale of Quasimodo, a man with a deformity that has led his “master,” Frollo, to despise him. His life was saved by the archbishop, who caught Frollo trying to drown him as a child. But as Quasimodo grows up with the hatred of Frollo, he knows nothing else.
Then he meets Esmeralda, a woman he should hate, according to Frollo anyway, simply because she is a gypsy. Through her, however, he experiences love for the first time in his life. Realizing his master has been teaching him falsehoods his whole life, he teams up with the gypsies to free them and the city of Paris from the clutches of Frollo.
Of course, being a Disney movie, they triumph over Frollo and his guards, with the villain falling to his death from the balcony of Notre Dame. It remains to be seen if the happy ending will remain as such with a live-action remake, or if a little poetic license is to be taken.
