Lin-Manuel Miranda is writing a stage musical version of The Warriors, Sol Yurick’s 1965 novel, which inspired the 1979 cult thriller film by director Walter Hill. According to The New York Post, which first reported the news, not many details on the project are know at this point, but Miranda’s involvement was confirmed.
The novel and film are about a fictional New York City street gang who travel from the Bronx to their home turf of Coney Island after being framed for the murder of a respected gang leader. Hill’s film, which starred Michael Beck and James Remar, was not a musical. A&M released its soundtrack, which featured songs by Barry De Vorzon, Joe Walsh, Arnold McCuller, and more. Many of the tracks later appeared in the 2005 video game The Warriors.
Miranda previously created and wrote the music for Broadway musicals In the Heights and Hamilton. In the Heights won the Tony Awards for Best Musical and Best Original Score, as well as the Grammy Award for Best Musical Theater Album. Hamilton scored the Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical. Miranda has since composed songs for films like Moana, Encanto, and the recent live-action The Little Mermaid.
The writer and musician appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone in 2016 to discuss his success with Hamilton. He spoke about the work that’s come to him since the show debuted on Broadway.
“Writing music for Star Wars was amazing,” Miranda told Rolling Stone. “J.J. Abrams was here and I offhandedly joked, ‘Hey, if you need cantina music…’ And he said, ‘I do need cantina music!’ So that sort of gave me incredible courage. Ask the thing you want to ask your hero while your hero is in front of you! Don’t be a dick, don’t be obnoxious. But also know that you may never get that opportunity again.”
Last year, Miranda discussed the many projects he’s hoped to get off the ground in recent years, saying not all of them have been successful.
“I had the rights to a book called My Name Is Asher Lev by Chaim Potok, which is one of my favorite books about being an artist and creativity,” he said. “It’s a beautiful masterpiece of a book, and I loved getting to meet Chaim’s wife, and she granted us the rights. But it also happened around the time that I was writing Hamilton, and I was, basically, just so pregnant with Hamilton that I had to keep writing that and the rights lapsed. And that’s OK. They made a beautiful play adaptation of it a few years ago.”
In the film world, Miranda also produced Jon M. Chu’s big-screen adaptation of In the Heights and directed the musical Tick, Tick… Boom, which earned an Oscar nomination for star Andrew Garfield.