‘Mufasa’ Songwriter Lin-Manuel Miranda On Working With “Great Storyteller” Barry Jenkins & Why The ‘Hamilton’ Parallel Is A Myth

deadline.com:

Lin-Manuel Miranda has been very, very busy. Last week, Mufasa: The Lion King was released and is soaring at the box office, he’s circling an EGOT (again) and he’s prepping for All In, his first ever play on Broadway. “And it’s snowing like crazy here in New York!” he says, tilting his screen to the window over video call. “It’s all lovely, lovely times.” “Lovely times” is right for the Pulitzer Prize-winner, currently on a packed press tour for writing the soundtrack to Barry Jenkins’ Mufasa: The Lion King, a prequel to the 2019 remake of The Lion King.

The original 1994 animated movie featured songs written by Tim Rice and Sir Elton John, which seemed impossibly big shoes for Miranda to fill. “It was daunting, I was low-key daunted,” he says with a wide grin, sans his trademark goatee.

Miranda had a lot going on when he took on Mufasa in 2021. He was working on his first debut directorial feature Tick, Tick… Boom!, doing press for Netflix’s Vivo and Jon M.

Chu’s film adaptation of his breakout musical In The Heights, and had just finished writing the Billboard #1 soundtrack for Disney’s animation hit Encanto.