A mixtape and a 90-minute documentary of the megahit Tony Award-winning musical will be released this fall.
- Jun 17, 2016
AceShowbiz - Lin-Manuel Miranda confirms Brodaway's "Hamilton" will film two performances with the original cast before his exit. A mixtape and a 90-minute documentary of the megahit Tony Award-winning musical will be released this fall.
"There's a cover of 'Satisfied' that is going to blow your f***ing minds-you can put asterisks through that!" Lin-Manuel said enthusiastically at the Thursday, June 16 press conference announcing his departure from "Hamilton", "It's more like a satchel [of songs cut from 'Hamilton']."
"Hamilton's story was pretty clear," he continued, "There's probably 10-15 songs [that were cut], which is really good batting average for me, and we're releasing some of those on the 'Hamilton Mixtape' that will come out in the fall. That is still deciding what it wants to be. I'm letting the artists who are [involved] take the lead on that. It's right now a mix of covers and 'inspired-bys.' So there will be a cover of 'My Shot.' The chorus is our chorus, but the verses are incredible rappers doing what they do and writing incredible verses that I didn't write."
There will be multiple demos of songs which didn't make the final cut. Lin-Manuel explained, "So I'm going to put that cut slavery rap battle that was in the book... We're putting my demo of that on [the album]. I have a song called 'Valley Forge' that I cut that we actually performed in the Lincoln Center concert. I sort of took the best lines from it and put it in 'Stay Alive', but the 'Valley Forge' demo will be on the recording."
"There's a number of other demos... 'Congratulations' was a song that Angelica had. I think we're putting that on the Mixtape. So there's going to be like six or seven of the cut tunes on that as interludes between these amazing artists," he added, "A lot of my favorite rap albums have skits, so those are our skits, like me singing hoarsely at four in the morning with these tunes."
"The Hamilton Mixtape" will be released some time in October, while a documentary film titled "Hamilton's America" will be released on October 17 on PBS' Great Performances. "It's going to have footage from the show that no one has seen yet," Lin-Manuel said of the documentary, "I want to preface this. It's not like the 'Heights' doc. It's not the road to Broadway. We lived that movie already. It's a great little Great Performances movie; this is very different. This is sort of where Hamilton intersects with history."
"Alex Horwitz, who is directing the doc, is one of my best friends from college in addition to being a very talented filmmaker," he continued, "He just started filming me when I was writing it very early [on]. He's got footage of me writing 'My Shot' in the Morris-Jumel Mansion, working out Burr's 'Gentleman, lower your voices...' He's got this insane footage because he was like, 'Can I throw a camera on you since you're writing this thing?' And, he's gone on to get interviews with-my God-George W. Bush, the Obamas, Jimmy Fallon, Questlove."
According to Lin-Manuel, the documentary will also include his sit-down interviews. "I did sit-down interviews with [Stephen] Sondheim and John Weidman," he shared, "I did a sit-down interview with [rapper] Nas to talk about writing lyrics for the theatre and writing lyrics for hip-hop and where they [intersect]. [The film is] more of a 'How this thing came together.' "
Javier Munoz will succeed Lin-Manuel in Brodway's "Hamilton" full time beginning on July 11.
Lin-Manuel, however, promised that he would be back eventually. "I think this is a role I'm going to be going back to again and again," he said, "I plan to revisit this role a lot."
Lin-Manuel will star in "Mary Poppins Returns" alongside Emily Blunt. The "Mary Poppins" sequel is slated for a December 25, 2018 release in the U.S. He's also putting the finishing touches on the music for "Moana", which is coming to theaters on November 23.
