Disney+ will be the stream where it happens.
On July 3, the stage production of Broadway’s Hamilton will finally arrive on the digital service. Writer/Producer/Actor Lin-Manuel Miranda leads the full original cast in this taping of the stage show about Alexander Hamilton and the American Revolution. It won 11 Tony Awards as well as the Pulitzer Prize.
The at-home debut of this cultural phenomenon was always going to be a major event, but now — given Miranda’s inspired multi-racial casting of America’s Founding Fathers (mostly African-American and Latino actors) — it will even more so. The timing couldn’t be more resonant, nor something that Miranda or Disney could’ve predicted when they struck this streaming deal during the beginnings of the COVID-19 lockdown.
Rated as PG-13, the uncensored production has enough profanities to easily elicit an R. No confirmation has been given if the rating is simply lax to fit Disney+’s non-R policy, or if this taping has been edited to excise all the F-words or any moments of suggestive material.
UPDATE: Miranda took to Twitter to confirm that, yes, this version of Hamilton has been lightly censored to garner the PG-13 rating. He explains exactly how (I’ve edited his Tweet for language):
- “LANGUAGE! On July 3, you’re getting the whole show, every note & scene, & a 1-minute countdown clock during intermission (bathroom!) But MPAA has a hard rule about language: more than 1 utterance of “F—” is an automatic R rating. We have 3 “F—s” in our show. So…I literally gave two f—s so the kids could see it:
- 1. In Yorktown, there’s a mute over “I get the f___ back up again”
- 2. “Southern *record scratch*kin’ Democratic Republicans.”
- You can sing whatEVER you like at home (even sync up the album)! Love you. Enjoy.
So that answers that. One F-word remains (I wonder if it’s the first for Disney’s streaming service) as does all other language and sexually mature themes.
To be sure, while I would agree that it’s now appropriately rated, Hamilton pushes the limits of the PG-13 rating at times. Don’t assume that just because it’s on Disney+ and not R-rated that it’s appropriate for the whole family. It’s not.
If you subscribe to Disney+, your living room will be the room where it happens, starting Friday July 3, 2020.
