PC: I was just talking to Don Hahn about all the great cut songs you wrote with Howard for ALADDIN. Could you tell me about those?
AM: We're getting them back!
PC: How so?
AM: We're doing a stage musical of ALADDIN and all those songs are going to be in it.
PC: How wonderful! Tell me everything! Who's doing the adaptation with you?
AM: Chad Beguelin wrote the book. He did a fantastic job. He and I also wrote a new song that will be going in, along with a lot of the cut Howard Ashman songs and some of the cut Tim Rice songs, and a song that I wrote music and lyrics for that was in the theatrical adaptation at California Adventure.
PC: That's quite a team, then - you, Ashman, Rice, Beguelin! Will it be substantially different from the film?
AM: It has more of the feeling of a Hope & Crosby road picture - which is what Howard and I originally wanted for the musical. We are going to try it out, hopefully, next summer.
PC: Do you have a design team in place yet? It will be especially important for a stage ALADDIN, I would think.
AM: No, not yet.
PC: It has such great possibilities. It should be good!
AM: Let's hope so! Knock on wood. You never know, you never know.
So that's what, 3 Menken musicals coming to B'way?PC: Speaking of screen to stage adaptations that take a different tone than before: I loved the James Lapine HUNCHBACK in Germany. Will it ever come to the US?
AM: Thank you. We're bringing that one back, too!
PC: Tell me when/what/where.
AM: Stephen and I and Scott Schwartz - who is directing, so it's a bit of a Schwartz family affair - are doing it.
PC: Is it using the Lapine text?
AM: Yes, we are still using James Lapine's book. It's coming.
PC: It's been coming for a long time now! We're ready.
AM: You're telling me! (Laughs.) We've even added some songs.
PC: So this is a reworked version of the German version?
AM: In the interim, after Berlin, Stephen and I worked on a television musical version of HUNCHBACK with some new songs and things. It didn't happen, but we still have some material from that that we are going to be working into it. We are at the starting gate for that, but we have a pretty good idea of what we want to do.
I hope this hasn't already been posted in the Tangled thread (I'm not reading it until the movie comes out), because the interview also contains information about that movie and also a little about Enchanted II.