If you can hear a distant ringing of bells, it's because Disney has landed on the latest story it wants to unearth from the archives and give a live-action makeover. The latest film targeted by the Mouse House is The Hunchback Of Notre Dame.
Disney has hired M Butterfly playwright David Henry Hwang to work on a new script based on the 1996 cartoon and the Victor Hugo source material it drew from. The plan is to craft a live-action movie musical, with Alan Menken returning to write the music again, teaming up with Wicked's Stephen Schwartz. The pair's addition is interesting, since they worked on a stage musical version for Disney in Europe, but won't be referencing that directly (even if they might share some of the same songs from the animated effort).
Beauty And The Beast's Josh Gad is aboard to produce and, according to Deadline, could end up in the lead, but casting has not started yet. There's no sign yet of when the film, currently simply titled Hunchback might hit Disney's release schedule. The company's latest conversion job, Dumbo, lands on 29 March.
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