Disney hopes streaming ‘Hamilton’ makes history
When Lin-Manuel Miranda posted the trailer for the new Hamilfilm on Twitter on Sunday night, it quickly blew up bigger than a Hamilton-Jefferson rap battle. By the next afternoon, more than 220,000 people had liked the tweet from the Hamilton creator, with the trailer generating 4.2 million views.
Yet that’s only the beginning of the notable metrics for Hamilfilm, as the upcoming screen rendering of the stage smash is known. When the event, which was shot with most of the original Broadway cast onstage four years ago, premieres July 3 on Disney Plus, it will serve as a major lure for, and bellwether of, the streaming service.
Even more important than what the debut does for Disney is what it says about the broader concept of streaming. Since its inception, streaming has been about delivering to users serialized episodes of individualized content, a place of a thousand niches and endless binges. Hamilfilm offers the reverse — an attempt to bring old-school, gather-in-the-living-room entertainment values to a digital world.
“Hamilton is not a series but a major one-off. And Disney Plus has never had a one-off,” said Dan Rayburn, a streaming consultant and expert.
It would be hard to imagine that more cultural or economic meaning could be wrung out of Hamilton. The rap-driven Broadway musical about the Founding Fathers and Mothers that opened in 2015 swept the Tonys, sold out soundtracks and world tours, grossed more than half a billion dollars in New York alone and ignited a renaissance for Broadway musicals among teenagers.
Yet the movie’s release continues to up the ante. Hamilfilm is being planned as a kind of national barbecue. With Americans lacking concerts and ballgames to attend, Disney hopes they will mark the holiday in a quintessentially 2020 manner: by staying home to watch a show recorded in 2016.
Comparisons are running high to other big summer entertainment events, particularly the film Independence Day, which on July 4 nearly a quarter-century ago brought tens of millions of people to theaters around the world.
“I think [an at-home viewing of] Hamilton is definitely a weird way of uniting people on a holiday,” said Josh Spiegel, a cultural critic and commentator who often focuses on Disney, “but it will be a very effective way. People won’t share the experience in theaters like they do with movies, but they’ll share it with a lot of people on social media.”
Disney, via a spokeswoman, declined to comment for this story.
Acquired for some $75 million, the Hamilton movie stitches together several performances of the show, as Aaron Burr, George Washington, Angelica Schuyler, Thomas Jefferson and, of course, Alexander and Eliza Hamilton mix it up and have it out at the dawn of America. (When it comes to a proper Hollywood adaptation, fans will have to wait; Broadway phenomena become traditional movies only years or decades later, after every dollar is drained from their live stagings.)
Hamilfilm was originally slated for a theatrical release in October 2021. But the pandemic created an unexpected domino effect. It forced Disney executives to move a whole group of 2020 releases to next year, prompting them to find a new calendar home for Hamilfilm.
Disney executives met with Miranda, the show’s creator, as well as the show’s director, Tommy Kail, and producer, Jeffrey Seller. The trio agreed that a shift to the small screen and the pandemic-entertainment landscape was the best move.
“In light of the extraordinary challenges facing our world, this story about leadership, tenacity, hope, love and the power of people to unite against the forces of adversity is both relevant and impactful,” Disney Executive Chairman Bob Iger said in announcing the release last month. “We have the brilliant Lin-Manuel Miranda and the team behind Hamilton to thank for allowing us to do so more than a year before planned.”
Box office revenue would, of course, be lost. But the company is gambling that the chance to see an expensive Broadway show from our living rooms will blow us away, helping market Disney Plus and even attract new subscribers. (Unlike Universal’s The King of Staten Island, available for a $20 digital rental, this isn’t an attempt to make money off a movie, but rather to drive consumers to subscribe to a service.)
As of early May, Disney Plus had 54.5 million subscribers, with 60 percent of those in the United States. The service is not only the future of the entertainment company — it’s one of the few pillars of the conglomerate’s business that has been taking in money during the pandemic, as many theme parks, team sports on ESPN and theaters remain out of commission until at least next month.