The Hip-Hop musical “Hamilton: An American Musical” has set box office records on Broadway and in the process, cleared hundreds of millions of dollars since its debut in February of 2015.
In fact the play is still so hot, that in November, “Hamilton: An American Musical” set a record for best one-week earnings ever in a single week by a Broadway show.
The play has exposed the genre of hip-hop to scores of people on Broadway, aka the capitol of the theater world.
The hip-hop play would have never happened, if “Alexander Hamilton” writer Ron Chernow had not taken a stroll through a Brooklyn park one fateful day.
The author of the book bumped into a friend, whose daughter knew Lin-Manuel Miranda, who said the budding playwright was a huge fan of the book.
That chance encounter led to a meeting between the men in 2004, and the rest is “history.”
Ron Chernow held a lengthy discussion with students at Drew University and during his talks, he revealed some really cool facts about the play “Hamilton: An American Musical.”
Here are just some of the interesting tidbits Ron Chernow offered up. Check out more at Drew University.
According to Ron Chernow, the book “Hamilton” was option three times to become a Hollywood feature film., But it never happened.
“I said to my literary agent, ‘I don’t understand this. What more could one want from a story?’”
Ron Chernow said people took the concept of a hip-hop musical about Alexander Hamilton as a joke.
“I heard one young woman saying to the other, ‘It’s a musical about Alexander Hamilton!’ They both started roaring with laughter,” Chernow said. “And then the first one added, ‘And it’s in hip-hop!’ Then they really roared with laughter. That was basically the reaction we were getting from everywhere.”
The play was so successful, it helped keep Alexander Hamilton on the $10 bill. According to Drew University, the US Treasury Department was considering dumping Hamilton for a female historical figure. But thanks to the hip-hop play’s popularity, U.S. Secretary US Treasury Secretary Jack Lew changed his mind.
“He said that the one thing that he had not recognized is the popularity of the book and the musical itself.”
