The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996)
- Gary Trousdale, Kirk Wise originally wanted a completely different ending for the film, but test audiences preferred the one we see today.
- The original script for The Hunchback of Notre Dame was written over a decade before production finally began in 1996.
- During the filming of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Tom Hulce improvised one of the most famous lines in the movie.
The Hunchback of Notre Dame is a 1996 American animated musical drama produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation, the studio's darkest and most thematically ambitious film of the Renaissance era. Based on Victor Hugo's 1831 novel, the film follows Quasimodo, voiced by Tom Hulce, a deformed bell-ringer who has been raised in the bell tower of Notre Dame Cathedral by his cruel guardian Judge Claude Frollo, voiced by Tony Jay, who has convinced Quasimodo that he is too monstrous to be seen by the outside world. When Quasimodo ventures out during the Festival of Fools and meets the compassionate Romani woman Esmeralda, voiced by Demi Moore, he defies Frollo β who is revealed to have murdered Quasimodo's mother and who now lusts after Esmeralda with a religious fervor that alternates between desire and genocidal hatred.
The Hunchback of Notre Dame tackled themes of religious hypocrisy, genocide, lust, and social injustice with remarkable boldness for a children's film. Alan Menken and Stephen Schwartz's score, particularly Frollo's "Hellfire" β in which the villain prays before a fireplace while hallucinating Esmeralda and confessing his sinful desire β was the darkest and most musically sophisticated number Disney had ever produced. The film earned $325 million worldwide.
