The Disney+ Recording Is Wonderful, But Will Hamilton Ever Become A Movie Too?

The outbreak of COVID-19 has kept a lot of people inside throughout these past several months, but now thanks to the upcoming release of Hamilton on Disney+ on Friday, July 3, fans are going to get to experience the widely popular Broadway musical right from the comfort of their own homes. The film provides a firsthand look at the actual stage production and is performed by the original cast, including Lin-Manuel Miranda in the title role. But will this be the only iteration of the Broadway phenomenon or could Hamilton eventually become an actual movie sometime down the line?

As of now, the stage version is already being referenced as the Hamilton movie; however, that doesn’t mean that one day a full-fledged movie adaptation couldn't be made out of the Broadway production. In fact, one of Miranda’s other major musical creations, In the Heights, has already been given the box office treatment and is slated to hit the big screen in June 2021. (The date was pushed back due to the pandemic.) That alone could signify that Hamilton will ultimately follow in those same exact footsteps should the opportunity arise.

For his part, Miranda had originally intended on debuting this Hamilton stage version in theaters, but in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak agreed it would be best to make it available for streaming instead. That doesn’t mean he doesn’t still hope it will one day grace the silver screen, though. “We hope the possibility still exists and that once movie theaters are open again, there’s a world in which this plays in movie theaters,” Miranda recently told Variety. However, when it comes to a full-on movie adaptation of the project, he admits to being a little less enthused.

“I don’t love a lot of movie musicals based on shows because it’s hard to stick the landing,” he confessed to the outlet. “I’m very proud of Jon Chu’s version of In the Heights. It is a different animal than the stage production. As long as I think of those as different things, it’s exciting. I don’t know what a cinematic version of Hamilton looks like. If I had, I’d have written it as a movie.” So while Miranda doesn’t seem to have completely written the possibility off, it seems that, for the time being, he has no immediate plans to set something like that in motion.

For now, he’s simply content with being able to make the stage show accessible to a much wider audience. "No one can predict the way a work is received, and the way Hamilton has been received has surpassed everyone's wildest dreams, but our biggest issue has always been accessibility," Miranda stated on Good Morning America on Monday, June 22. "We had the luxury to basically shoot an independent film in our first year, and now the world can see what it felt like to be in that room in June 2016 next Friday."