“HAMILTON” fans rejoiced as Lin-Manuel Miranda’s musical was finally released on Disney Plus on July 3, giving people the long holiday weekend to watch the groundbreaking performance. Originally released in 2015 on Broadway, the hip-hop infused musical about founding father Alexander Hamilton became an instant smash hit. Most people had to pay hundreds or thousands of dollars to get seats at the frequently sold-out shows, but now anybody with a Disney Plus subscription can enjoy it from their own home. The film features the original cast, including Lin-Manuel Miranda, Leslie Odom Jr., Phillipa Soo, Anthony Ramos, Daveed Diggs, Christopher Jackson, Renee Elise Goldberry and Jasmine Cephas Jones. Director Thomas Kail put together the Disney Plus version after filming several live performances during the show’s original run. “Hamilton” was originally going to hit theaters on Oct. 15, 2021, but Disney moved up the release date in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic and the drought of films as theaters were shuttered. Creator and star Lin-Manuel Miranda live tweeted his thoughts during a watch-along with fans on Twitter, and other cast members and celebrities poured in their love for “Hamilton.” Miranda shared some inside secrets about the filmed version, like the fireworks appearing over the Disney logo as the movie starts was Kail’s idea. He also revealed a “Macbeth” quote that was scrapped from the final version and an improvised line that Daveed Diggs came up with as Thomas Jefferson in the second act. Vanessa Nadal, Miranda’s wife, also joined in on the live tweeting, saying she’d always boo in the audience when her husband kissed someone else on stage. She also revealed that Miranda was overjoyed after seeing Renee Elise Goldsberry audition, saying he “finally found a woman to tell the story in the rap instead of getting eaten by the rap.” Goldsberry plays Angelica Schuyler and showcases her speedy rap skills in the song “Satisfied.” Disney+ added subscriptions at an impressive rate in the days surrounding the new project’s July 3 release, as the streaming service enjoyed a 64 percent increase in downloads during the week of June 29 to July 5 compared to the week before it, Yahoo Finance reported, citing data from the Sensor Tower research firm. Between last Friday and Sunday alone, Disney+ received a whopping 266,084 new downloads in the United States, marking a 72 percent increase compared to the average of the previous four weekends, according to Variety, which cited numbers from the Apptopia analytics company. The original Broadway show won 11 Tony Awards in 2016. The film has been a major hit among critics, as it boasts a 99 percent fresh rating among critics and 93 percent positive rating from viewers on the review website Rotten Tomatoes. Some social media users have been critical due to the real Hamilton’s connection to slavery, using the hashtag #CancelHamilton. Miranda told NPR last month, “Hamilton — although he voiced anti-slavery beliefs — remained complicit in the system. And other than calling out Jefferson on his hypocrisy with regards to slavery in Act 2, doesn’t really say much else over the course of Act 2. And I think that’s actually pretty honest. ... He didn’t really do much about it after that.” “Hamilton” is one of the biggest movies of the year. However, it’s possible that it won’t be recognized at the biggest awards show of the year, as the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences has found that the movie is ineligible in the documentary film category. According to Vanity Fair, an AMPAS rule from 1997 would make “Hamilton” ineligible in the documentary film categories as the rule disqualifies films which are “works that are essentially unfiltered records of performances.” However, even if “Hamilton” can’t compete for that particular award, it seems Walt Disney Studios is planning to still submit the film to the various guilds that make decisions regarding other awards, as the qualifications for nomination vary between guilds and thus “Hamilton” might still end up in the running for other awards. And Disney is expected to still submit the film to the Academy as well, thus it will have to make an official ruling on eligibility. Even when it comes to the documentary award, there’s still a chance that “Hamilton” could qualify. A handful of “concert films,” like Spike Lee’s “The Original Kings of Comedy,” have been considered for Oscars in the past because they had sufficient creative contributions that made them more than simply recordings of performances. The same is technically true of “Hamilton.” While the bulk of the film is made up of two live performances which were recorded, the close-ups, which could not have been captured on stage without disrupting the performance, were filmed separately. The question seems to be, are those creative contributions enough to get consideration. “Hamilton” certainly blurs a lot of lines and so it’s understandable if the Oscars aren’t quite sure what to do with it. At the end of the day, “Hamilton” is a stage musical, which has already won its share of Tony Awards, and it feels a little out of place to see a filmed version, essentially the identical show, show up at the Oscars and start taking film awards too.(SD-Agencies) | 