MOVIE PREMIERE: Lin-Manual Miranda’s cultural phenomenon of a musical,
Hamilton, opened at the Public Theater in 2015, moved uptown to Broadway later that same year, and won 11 Tonys. In June 2016 – the week before those Tonys were awarded – Miranda and his co-stars filmed
Hamilton three times for a future movie. It was filmed twice with an audience, once on a closed-theater Monday so cameras could roam and swoop freely on and above the stage. The plan was to release the movie in the fall of 2021, but the pandemic changed release plans, and Disney+ streams the movie today as a special Independence Day weekend treat. It’s a fabulous film version, capturing the original cast in top form, and I suspect this programming stunt will end up being one of the major, and most successful, TV events of the year. For my full review on NPR’s
Fresh Air with Terry Gross, listen to today’s
Fresh Air, or wait until later this afternoon and visit
the Fresh Air website.