Continuing with their live-action remake trend, Disney is reportedly in the works on Hunchback, an adaptation of the classic Victor Hugo novel.
Deadline is reporting that playwright David Henry Hwang has been selected to write a live action musical adaptation of Victor Hugo’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame.
Alan Menken and Stephen Schwartz will reportedly write the music with Mandeville Films slated to produce along with Josh Gad. Gad is also rumored for the lead role of Quasimodo, but as of now no casting is solid now.
This film is expected to pull from Disney’s animated version as well as the original novel, but not from the Schwartz/Menken stage production that debuted in Europe. According to reports, Mandeville’s, David Hoberman, has been interested in producing a live-action version going back some 30 years when he was Disney film president.
Released in 1996, Disney’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame, The film follows Quasimodo, the misshapen but gentle-souled bell ringer of Notre Dame, who was nearly killed as a baby by Claude Frollo, the Minister of Justice. But Frollo was forced by the Archdeacon of Notre Dame to raise Quasimodo as his own. Now a young man, Quasimodo is hidden from the world by Frollo in the belltower of the cathedral. But during the Festival of Fools, Quasimodo, cheered on by his gargoyle friends Victor, Hugo, and Laverne, decides to take part in the festivities, where he meets the lovely gypsy girl Esmeralda and the handsome soldier Phoebus. The three of them find themselves ranged against Frollo’s cruelty and his attempts to destroy the home of the gypsies, the Court of Miracles. And Quasimodo must desperately defend both Esmeralda and the very cathedral of Notre Dame.
Source: Deadline
