Composer Alan Menken Talks About His Upcoming Disney Projects; Says Live-Action THE LITTLE MERMAID Features Four New Songs
Alan Menken is the composer behind classic movie songs like those from Little Shop of Horrors, The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Newsies, Aladdin, Pocahontas, and countless others, and he is still hard at work bringing more original music to movies that we are looking forward to. The movie he is working on now, or at least was working on before Hollywood closed up shop, is Disney’s live-action remake of The Little Mermaid.
In a recent virtual interview on Rosie O’Donnell’s fund-raising, one-time internet revival of her talk show, Menken chatted about the status of his projects. He said:
“This has really been a great time for writing. Production stopped on The Little Mermaid movie. We recorded all the songs, and I wrote four new songs with Lin-Manuel Miranda, the lyricist for Mermaid. And I’m working on Disenchanted, the sequel to Enchanted. And I have another Broadway show. Oh, and Hercules is coming to the stage, of course. We did that in Central Park last summer. Just a whole bushel of new projects.”
This is all so exciting. Four new songs is very cool. My daughter always says that her favorite part about the remake of Beauty and the Beast is the new songs that were incorporated, and I totally agree. Menken can pretty much do no wrong composition-wise, and I’m a huge fan of Lin-Manuel Miranda, so I am stoked for the new The Little Mermaid, as well as Disenchanted, Disney’s live-action The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and the remake of Little Shop of Horrors! Lots of super fun stuff to look forward to, so if we could go ahead and get rid of this virus so that Hollywood can get back to work, that’d be great, thanks.
Check out the musical montage that Alan Menken put together for the Rosie O’Donnell show below that starts at about 1:03:20, and enjoy!