For more than a decade now, Disney has been churning out live-action remakes/re-imaginings of its classic animated movies. Peter Pan & Wendy is the latest of these offerings, arriving to Disney+ subscribers at the end of April, and fellow 2023 new movie release The Little Mermaid is next up, hitting theaters at the end of May. There are plenty more of these live-action adaptations on the way, but one we haven’t heard much about is The Hunchback of Notre Dame, which was announced in January 2019. Alan Menken, who composed the 1996 original with Stephen Schwartz, has explained why this particular upcoming Disney movie is taking so long to get off the ground.
Menken and Schwartz are both attached to resume their musical duties on the Hunchback of Notre Dame remake, so one would think that they would be looped in on where things stand with the project. And yet, four years after that initial announcement, Menken informed Comicbook.com that he has “no idea” about if the movie is still happening, continuing:
It's a tough one, because the Hunchback movie, Hunchback story involves a lot of real, real issues that are important issues and should be explored to be discussed. And there has to be an agreement about how we deal with those issues. You know, do we do a Hunchback without 'Hellfire?' I don't think so ... So it sits in this limbo right now, but the Hercules movie is apparently underway and I got some inklings of what's going on, but just some, and I've been more involved with the Broadway show off of Hercules, which is coming, and it's really exciting.
Although it was released during the Disney Renaissance era and scored both critical and commercial success, The Hunchback of Notre Dame is definitely a trickier animated Disney movie to adapt for live-action than most. Not only does Quasimodo need to be sensitively depicted, but as Alan Menken said, you can’t tell this story without delving into the Christian aspects of the story. After all, we’re following a young man who lives in a cathedral and was raised by Judge Claude Frollo, Paris’ fantastically religious Minister of Justice who especially hates the Romani people. This needs to be more delicately handled compared to something like Cinderella.
When the live-action version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame was announced, David Henry Hwang was tapped to write the script, with this new take simply being called Hunchback. Frozen and Beauty and the Beast’s Josh Gad was also on board to produce, and there had also been talk of him possibly playing Quasimodo too. Two years ago, Gad said that Hunchback was “Getting. Closer And. Closer,” but at this point, it’s difficult to determine if the project is still being actively worked on at Disney or has been set aside. Still, with a story like this, it’s better to spend as much time as possible to make sure it’s done right rather than rush through it.
But already noted, The Hunchback of Notre Dame is just one of many other live-action Disney adaptations coming down the creative pipeline, with other including the Rachel Zegler-led Snow White slated for 2024, Lilo & Stitch currently shooting, Guy Ritchie tackling Hercules following his work on Aladdin, and even Moana, which just came out seven years ago, is getting the remake treatment. Nevertheless, if any concrete updates on Hunchback come in, we here at CinemaBlend will pass them along.
