Eight-time Academy Award-winning composer Alan Menken has signed a non-exclusive, multi-picture deal with Disney/Touchstone Pictures. The music man behind such enduring animated favorites as The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, Pocahontas and The Hunchback of Notre Dame is developing a new animated musical, The Frog Princess, for Walt Disney Feature Animation and will score non-animated films and live musical productions for the studio.
Menken’s first assignment under the new deal is scoring and writing five original songs for Disney’s upcoming romantic musical-fantasy, Enchanted, which is being directed by Kevin Lima (Tarzan, 102 Dalmatians). For that project, Menken will reunite with Tony and Oscar-winning lyricist Stephen Schwartz, with whom he collaborated on Pocahontas and The Hunchback of Notre Dame.
Menken recently completed scoring Disney’s upcoming live-action comedy re-make, The Shaggy Dog, which is scheduled to arrive in theaters on March 10. He is currently in preproduction on stage version of The Little Mermaid for Disney Theatrical Productions.
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