Lin-Manuel Miranda is directing a film adaptation of Octet, the experimental chamber musical about internet addiction and digital isolation. This is not the Lin-Manuel Miranda project you'd expect.
Octet was created by Dave Malloy, the composer behind Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812 and Ghost Quartet. Malloy's work is intentionally strange—minimal staging, unconventional song structures, a preference for small venues and intimate storytelling. His musicals feel like art installations that happen to have music.
Miranda, by contrast, is Broadway's populist king. Hamilton made musicals cool for people who thought they hated musicals. In the Heights brought Latin music to mainstream theater. Even his more experimental work—Freestyle Love Supreme—is designed to be accessible.
So what happens when Miranda adapts Malloy?
The contrast is the story. Malloy writes chamber pieces for audiences who already love experimental theater. Miranda writes crowd-pleasers that sneak in complexity through sheer craft. If he can translate Octet's themes—people seeking connection through technology and ending up more isolated—without sanding down Malloy's edges, this could be genuinely interesting.
The original musical featured eight performers in a circle, singing a cappella about their relationship with their phones, the internet, and each other. It's claustrophobic by design, which makes it a strange fit for film. But Miranda has proven he understands how to open up stage material for cinema—In the Heights used New York itself as a character without losing the intimacy of the songs.
No cast has been announced yet, but expect Miranda to fill this with theater actors who can actually sing. One advantage of his Broadway credibility: he doesn't need movie stars to sell a musical. He can cast people who know how to handle Malloy's difficult vocal arrangements.
The question is whether mainstream audiences will show up for a musical about being extremely online. It's very 2018 in its anxieties, but given that we're all somehow more addicted to our phones now, maybe the timing still works.
In Hollywood, nobody knows anything—except me, occasionally. And I know that Lin-Manuel Miranda adapting a Dave Malloy musical is either a brilliant collision of sensibilities or a fundamental mismatch. Time will tell which.
