Since breaking big with the success of Hamilton, actor and songwriter Lin-Manuel Miranda has naturally been in demand by the movie world. Most of his collaborations so far have been with Disney (which had him working on Moana even as the Tony-winning stage music was in its early run), but now Lionsgate has brought him aboard the planned adaptations of Patrick Rothfuss' Kingkiller Chronicle books.
Rothfuss and Miranda first became friendly over Twitter and have now agreed that the latter will be a creative producer on whatever Lionsgate produces from the books, including any planned movies and a potential accompanying TV series. And because you don't want to hire Miranda without making use of his musical talents, he'll also be working on original songs.
"Pat Rothfuss' Kingkiller books are among the most read and re-read in our home," says the Hamilton man. "It's a world you want to spend lifetimes in, as his many fans will attest. Pat also writes about the act of making music more beautifully than any novelist I've ever read." Rothfuss’ series, which kicked off in 2007, includes an anchor trilogy (with the third book still to come) and three novellas set in the same world. The focus is told in three time streams: the present, in which the protagonist, Kvothe, is dictating his life’s story to a historian of sorts; the past, a first-person account of Kvothe’s life, and lastly, in chronologically cloudy parables and stories peppered throughout the books. It’s full of clever narrative tricks and meta subplots, and studios have been circling for a while, not least after Rothfuss took several meetings at the San Diego Comic-Con in summer 2015, before the Lionsgate deal was announced in October that year.
Lindsey Beer, one of the writing team working on new Transformers movies is scripting the first movie, based on the initial book The Name Of The Wind. And this marks just the latest project Miranda is involved in – he's acting, singing and dancing in Disney's new Mary Poppins film, Mary Poppins Returns, is involved in developing a live-action Little Mermaid and is aiming to produce a movie version of his first hit musical, In The Heights. Moana meanwhile, arrives on UK shores this Friday.
Lin-Manuel Miranda joining Emily Blunt in the new Mary Poppins movie