It has been reported that Disney+ is working on a movie adaptation of the Tony Award-winning musical “Once On This Island”.
According to the Hollywood Reporter, the adaptation is set to be written by Jocelyn Bioh, with Wanuri Kahiu on board to direct. The musical will be produced by Marc Platt.
The musical, with a book and lyrics by Lynn Ahrens and music by Stephen Flaherty, is a stunning, calypso-inspired adaptation of the novel “My Love, My Love; or The Peasant Girl” by Rosa Guy. It is described by many as being similar to a romantic island retelling of Hans Christian Anderson’s “The Little Mermaid”. “Once On This Island,” tells the story of Ti Moune, an orphaned peasant girl on her journey to reunite with her rich love Daniel, as the Gods watch on with a wager over whether her love can overcome the power of death.
A Broadway revival of the musical in 2017 threw “Once On This Island” back into the recent spotlight since its limited run in the mid-1990s. This Tony Award-winning revival featured the Disney on Broadway alum Merle Dandridge as Papa Ge, the sly demon of death, and Disney Legend Lea Salonga as Erzuile, the beautiful goddess of love. So far, no casting has been announced for this adaptation, which is set to run as a live-action movie, rather than a professionally-recorded performance like other musicals in the Disney+ library (such as “Newsies).
With the recent success of “Hamilton” on Disney+, which saw a huge increase in app downloads after it’s debut on the service last month, we can only hope that Disney+ is trying to expand its library with more musical titles.
