Lin-Manuel Miranda has always loved the 1979 action film The Warriors, but he initially had doubts that it could ever be turned into a musical.
In 2009, some of Miranda’s colleagues sent him an email trying to gauge his interest in adapting the film.
“I basically wrote back, ‘It’ll never work,’” Miranda, 44, exclusively told Luxury Handbag Shopping at the October 18 release party at Time Out Market New York for his and Eisa Davis’ musical concept album based on the film, Warriors. “And then my brain was like, ‘Unlesssss’ … and now here we are, about 15 years later, with the whole album of 26 songs proving 2009-me wrong.”
Miranda forgot about The Warriors for a while as he was a little busy writing and starring in the smash hit Broadway musical Hamilton, which opened in 2015. But the idea stayed with him.
“I saw this movie when I was 4 years old, so this is one of those stories I carried around with me like luggage. And as soon as I came up for air from the first few years of Hamilton … I wanted to write this,” Miranda said. “And so I was very happy Eisa agreed to write it with me.”
For now, the Warriors concept album is just an album, although Davis, 53, teased that an eventual stage production is possible. Miranda explained that starting with just the record meant he got to assemble his “dream” team.
“By making it as an album, we got the dream project. Like, Nas is walking down the red carpet right now!” he said. “It’s been amazing to actually do the dream cast first.”
In addition to Nas, 51, some of the stars featured on the album include Lauryn Hill, Colman Domingo, Marc Anthony, Billy Porter, Busta Rhymes, Cam’ron, Ghostface Killah and RZA.
Davis called the Warriors album “a dream come true in so many ways,” and gushed about her bond with Miranda.
“[I’ve loved] being able to develop this artistic relationship with Lin that really feels — in a lot of ways — like we’re family now, you know?” she told Us. “Almost like we share a brain.”
Davis recalled one uncanny shared experience that she and Miranda had while writing the finale for the album.
“[Lin’s] a bit of a procrastinator, but he owns that, and we just hadn’t gotten the [finale] music written yet. He had this splinter in his foot, and there was kind of a bit of a metaphor here. It was like, ‘If I could just get this splinter out of his foot, maybe this finale could get written,’” the playwright recalled. “I pulled this splinter out, and then something happened physically in our bodies. We both got these crazy cramps, and then the next day it was like labor pains. The song came out. … I just needed to pull that thorn from his paw.”
Davis had never seen The Warriors when Miranda asked her to write the album with him, but she was intrigued by his decision to deviate from the OG film by making the Warriors gang women.
“I think it’s very revolutionary and feminist to be able to have this flip on what the movie was, which has some sexist, misogynist, homophobic overtones that I’m not interested in, and I don’t think the world should be interested in at this moment — or ever,” she said.
While Davis said “we’ll see” about turning the album into a Broadway musical, she and Miranda have no plans to turn it into a movie.
“We are not gonna make a film,” she insisted. “Because we made this as a love letter to a film. So it’s already been in that medium. And so what it is that we’re interested in right now is just letting this be an album, and then we’ll see what happens.”
With reporting by Antonio Ferme
