Lin-Manuel Miranda Defends Not Submitting ‘Bruno’ for Oscars, Teases New ‘Little Mermaid’ Songs

variety.com:

Clayton Davis Lin-Manuel Miranda is ecstatic about the success of the animated feature “Encanto,” and for his second Oscar nomination for original song — this time, for the emotional number “Dos Oruguitas.” However, the performance of the movie’s soundtrack on the music charts has been getting all the headlines, specifically the hit song, “We Don’t Talk About Bruno.” Miranda doesn’t regret submitting “Dos Oruguitas” rather than “Bruno” for consideration for this year’s Academy Awards.

The decision had to be done by Nov. 1, which the film had yet opened in theaters despite its performance on the charts.“I’m still proud of ‘Dos Oruguitas’ as the submission,” Miranda says. “When those are the parameters, you have to pick the thing that best exemplifies the spirit of the movie, and it contains all of it inside this song – as opposed to a journey of a particular character.

It’s the foundational story, but I’m not going to say it wasn’t hard [to choose].” On this episode of Variety Awards Circuit Podcast, Miranda talks about the process of writing the original songs for the hit Disney animated feature “Encanto,” along with the difficult decision of choosing his Oscar-nominated song versus the chart-topping “We Don’t Talk About Bruno.” He also talks about taking the 2022 year off to mentor younger composers and focusing on “refilling my cup this year.” Finally, the New York-born Latino teases what we can expect from the live-action version of “The Little Mermaid” and the original songs he wrote for it.Listen below:“Encanto” is directed by Jared Bush, Byron Howard and Charise Castro Smith (co-director) and tells the story of a Colombian teenage girl Mirabel (voiced by Stephanie Beatriz).