Is Lin-Manuel Miranda the new king of Disney? Kid reporters grill songwriter about 'Encanto', ask for 'Frozen 3'
Lin-Manuel Miranda is everywhere these days, from bringing his mega-popular Broadway hit Hamilton to Disney+ to adapting his other award-winning Broadway hit In the Heights for Warner Bros./HBO to directing Tick, Tick… Boom!, a love letter to late Broadway composer Jonathan Larson.
The father of two continues to be for the children, too, writing songs for the Netflix summer release Vivo! and drawing even more critical acclaim for Disney’s new animated hit, the family musical comedy Encanto.
Miranda can also be seen in our newest episode of Kid Gloves (watch above), where our kid reporters Lyla and Luna — daughters of Yahoo Entertainment senior correspondent Kevin Polowy — grilled Miranda about his Hollywood takeover.
“I loved getting to write Disney songs about how complicated it is to be a part of a family,” Miranda tells them about Encanto, which centers around Mirabel (Stephanie Beatriz), a teenager in a remote, enchanted Colombian village and the only member of her family not to possess a magical gift.
Between 2016’s Moana (for which Miranda wrote songs like “How Far I’ll Go” and “You’re Welcome”), 2018’s Mary Poppins Returns (in which Miranda sang and danced) and now Encanto, the girls put together that the actor-composer has become one of Disney’s most reliable new hitmakers. (As he discusses, he even cameo'ed in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker from the Disney-owned Lucasfilm.)
“Do you like own Disney now?,” they ask. “Can you tell Mickey Mouse what to do?”
“I can’t, really, Mickey Mouse is kind of my boss,” he explains to them. “He tells me what to do.”
Can he at least make them Frozen 3?
“Frozen is really more Kristen and Bobby Lopez’s department than mine,” Miranda says of the Oscar-winning husband-and-wife Frozen composers. “But I can put in a good word.”
And then of course there’s Hamilton, the Broadway smash that launched Miranda into the stratosphere and made its way to Disney+ last summer. What’s the deal with that, the girls ask.
“I’ve been asking myself that question for 11 years,” Miranda laughs. “I’ll let you know when I find out.”
Encanto is now playing.
Watch the trailer:
— Video produced by Anne Lilburn and edited by John Santo
