When Lin Manuel Miranda first saw the final number of Hamilton on the big screen, he threw his shoes into the air, not perhaps the response the film’s producers had expected.
Later, Jon Kamen, the chairman and chief executive of RadicalMedia, said: “I thought, ‘OK, we did our job,’ If he starts throwing his shoes around the theatre, it’s pretty special.”
“Pretty special” is something of an understatement when it comes to Hamilton. The multi-award-winning show, as famed for the hip-hop singing founding father, as the cast shaming Mike Pence at a Broadway performance, the show has become a global phenomenon in the truest sense of the term. Now, thanks to Covid-19 pandemic, Hamilton is going digital, years before it was supposed to.
When Hamilton was filmed on Broadway, the digital version was originally planned for release at some point in the mid-2020s. However, in conjunction with the introduction of new streaming platform, Disney+, it is now possible to watch Hamilton from the comfort of your own home as early as 4 July.
As an investment, the film cost “less than $10 million” to shoot. It was sold on to Disney for over seven times that.
The 161-minute film is the entire Broadway show, including scenes, songs, and even including an intermission. Miranda even permitted the removal of two out of three obscenities from the libretto to secure a PG-13 rating from the Motion Picture Association of America.
Former Disney boss Bob Iger was instrumental in obtaining the film. He said: “I thought that ‘Hamilton’ was one of the most culturally significant pieces of art I had seen,” noting that, “And when I saw the film, I was extremely impressed. It’s not just the best seat in the house; it’s a seat that doesn’t exist in the house, because when you’re onstage it’s like you’re among those characters.”
