Lin-Manuel Miranda has managed to become a household name over the past 10 years due to his accolades in the worlds of film, stage, TV, and music. But if you were to describe the multi-hyphenate, how would you? Is he an actor or a musician? A film director or a playwright? I asked the man himself, and it turns out he didn’t see his career going in its current direction.
Right now, it seems that a lot of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s work is as a composer, such as his effort writing the original songs of the recently released film Mufasa: The Lion King. However, this wasn’t the dream. He explained in our interviews about Mufasa that he had always wanted to be a filmmaker, and composing was just his way in the door. Said Miranda,
My first love was movies, honestly. I was the kid walking around with my parent's camcorder, making stop motion with my G.I. Joes with ketchup packets for blood, like you all do. And then, you know, music was something that kind of came later to me, but I feel like it's brought me around to my first love, which is getting to be around movies, and being on a movie set is like my happiest place in the world.
Let’s crunch the numbers. Lin-Manuel Miranda has been nominated for five Tony awards, and although two of those were for his lead performances in Hamilton and In The Heights, his three wins were for composing. His work as a musician also resulted in his only two Oscar nominations, despite wearing many hats in the world of film. Acknowledging all of this, despite his wide array of talents, it’s probably most accurate to say that Lin-Manuel Miranda is, first and foremost, a famous American composer.
Lin-Manuel Miranda mentioned that music was his path to film, which makes sense considering the Hamilton of it all, but let’s not forget that he directed 2021’s Tick, Tick… Boom! The film about Jonathan Larson’s life is an incredible accomplishment, and although he personally didn't get attention from the Academy Awards, the work did receive three nominations.
More recently, Moana 2 found new composers as Miranda jumped ship to work on Mufasa instead. Many are saying that this move hurt the Disney sequel, leading us to believe that the iconic success of the first Moana was in large part due to the Hamilton creator's contributions. Despite this, his original tracks for Moana didn’t even crack our list of his best movie songs, which is really just to say that Lin-Manuel Miranda isn’t only primarily a composer, but he’s a damn good one.
Lin-Manuel Miranda may not be doing a lot of directing right now, but he always has something in the works, and you can hear his original songs for Mufasa: The Lion King, in theaters right now. He approached the project with some trepidation, but the end result is something the whole cast and crew can be proud of. We also have the whole 2025 movie release schedule to look forward to, so keep it right here at CinemaBlend for the latest news.
