A ‘Hamilton’/ ‘Force Awakens’ crossover? It’s kinda happening…
To musical theater nerds throughout the land, 2015 will be known as “The Year That Hamilton Made Musical Theater Nerds Out of Everybody Else in the World.” We ALMOST got you guys with Wicked, but we for sure got you with Hamilton. Composer/lyricist/star Lin Manuel Miranda’s awesomeness could not be contained by Hamilton, and so of course, Hollywood has come a-calling for Mr. Miranda. A few months ago we learned that Miranda has written the songs for upcoming Disney animated film Moana, and we justjustjust learned that Miranda ALSO composed music for Star Wars: The Force Awakens, uniting lightsaber-wielding nerds with triple-threat nerds, like it was always meant to be.
As Entertainment Weekly reports, on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, J.J. Abrams revealed that Miranda composed a song for Force Awakens. And not just ANY song, Miranda did the music for what will be the upcoming film’s take on A New Hope’s classic cantina scene.
The music for the original cantina scene was written by Hollywood super-legend John Williams, who ALSO wrote the music for Force Awakens. As Abrams tells it, Williams declined to write the music for this new cantina scene, and so there was immediately a lit-up vacancy sign for a new songwriter.
Cut to Abrams meeting Miranda backstage at Hamilton, and Miranda telling Abrams “If you need music for the cantina, I’ll write it.” The stars were aligning, it was all meant to be!
“I end up emailing Lin Miranda, and I say, ‘I know you were kidding, but if you actually want to write this music, I’m actually working on something.’” Abrams told Fallon. “He’s like, ‘I’ll drop everything.’”
So the two started collab-ing on the song, sending music files back and forth.
“This whole thing was nuts,” Abrams marveled. “Now, in the movie, in this one sequence, is this music Lin-Manuel Miranda and I wrote.”
When Abrams broke the news, Miranda took to Twitter to reveal a little bit more of the behind the scenes magic.
Hardest working dudes in showbiz, we are too excited to see the buckets of sweat pay off when The Force Awakens hits theaters December 18th!
In the meantime, check out the Fallon interview where Abrams reveals ALL the awesomeness.
(Image via Lucasfilm)
