The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996 film)

The Hunchback of Notre Dame is a 1996 American animated musical period drama film loosely based on the 1831 novel by Victor Hugo, and produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation. Directed by Gary Trousdale and Kirk Wise, produced by Don Hahn, and written by Tab Murphy, Irene Mecchi, Jonathan Roberts, and the writing team of Bob Tzudiker and Noni White, the film stars Tom Hulce, Demi Moore, Tony Jay, and Kevin Kline. The film follows Quasimodo (Hulce), the deformed and confined bell-ringer of Notre Dame, and his yearning to explore the outside world and be accepted by society, against the wishes of his cruel, puritanical adoptive father Claude Frollo (Jay), who also wants to exterminate Paris' Romani population.

In 1993, David Stainton, then a development executive at Disney Feature Animation, conceived the idea to adapt Victor Hugo's Gothic novel into an animated feature. He subsequently pitched the idea to then-Disney Studios chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg. At Katzenberg's request, Trousdale, Wise, and Hahn joined the project in 1993. Murphy wrote the first draft of the script, and Mecchi and Roberts, who had rewritten the script for The Lion King (1994), were soon brought in. Additional rewrites were provided by Tzudiker and White. That same year, the production team embarked on a research trip to Paris to study the Notre-Dame cathedral and additional locations for the film. The musical score was composed by Alan Menken, with songs written by Menken and lyricist Stephen Schwartz.

The Hunchback of Notre Dame premiered at the Louisiana Superdome in New Orleans on June 19, 1996, and was released in the United States on June 21. The film received generally positive reviews and was a commercial success, grossing over $325 million worldwide and becoming the fifth highest-grossing film of 1996. Despite the film's changes made from the original source material and adding comedic elements to ensure a G rating from the MPAA, it remains more mature and darker than any Disney animated films with approach to thematic elements, including themes of genocide, lust, prejudice, sin, and redemption.

A stage adaptation of the film was produced by Walt Disney Theatrical in 1999. A direct-to-video sequel, The Hunchback of Notre Dame II, was released in 2002.

Plot

thumb|The eastern view of the Cathedral [[Notre-Dame de Paris, France.]]

In 1482 Paris, a Romani storyteller named Clopin recounts the origin of Quasimodo, the bell-ringer of Notre Dame. Years earlier, Judge Claude Frollo, the city’s Minister of Justice, intercepts a group of Roma entering Paris. During the encounter, a Romani woman attempts to seek sanctuary at Notre Dame but is pursued by Frollo, who kills her on the cathedral steps. Discovering her deformed infant, Frollo attempts to drown the child but is stopped by the archdeacon, who compels him to atone by raising the boy. Frollo names him Quasimodo and confines him to the cathedral bell tower.

Twenty years later, Quasimodo has grown into a physically strong but socially isolated young man, his only companions being three animated gargoyles. Despite Frollo’s warnings that he will be ridiculed for his appearance, Quasimodo attends the annual Festival of Fools. Initially celebrated, he is soon humiliated by the crowd at the instigation of Frollo’s guards. He is rescued by Esmeralda, a compassionate Romani dancer who openly defies Frollo. When Frollo orders her arrest, she escapes.

Esmeralda later seeks refuge inside Notre Dame, where she befriends Quasimodo and meets Captain Phoebus, a soldier in Frollo’s service. Phoebus refuses to arrest her within the cathedral, respecting its sanctuary. In gratitude for her kindness, Quasimodo helps Esmeralda escape and is entrusted with a pendant that contains directions to the Court of Miracles, the Roma’s hidden refuge. Meanwhile, Frollo develops an obsessive desire for Esmeralda, which intensifies his campaign against the Roma.

As Frollo searches for Esmeralda, he employs increasingly violent tactics, including bribery, arrests, and arson. When Phoebus refuses to burn a house with innocent occupants, Frollo orders his execution. Phoebus escapes but is wounded and rescued by Esmeralda, who hides him in the cathedral. Quasimodo, encouraged by the gargoyles, prepares to confess his feelings to Esmeralda but learns that she and Phoebus have fallen in love.

Frollo later reveals to Quasimodo that he knows of the Court of Miracles and intends to attack it. Quasimodo and Phoebus attempt to warn the Roma using the pendant, but Frollo follows them and captures the entire group. When Esmeralda again rejects him, Frollo sentences her to death. As she is about to be executed, Quasimodo rescues her and brings her to the cathedral, invoking sanctuary.

Frollo defies this tradition and attacks Notre Dame. Phoebus frees the Roma and rallies the citizens against Frollo’s forces, while Quasimodo defends the cathedral. Frollo ultimately confronts Quasimodo and Esmeralda in the bell tower. During their struggle, Frollo falls to his death, while Quasimodo is saved by Phoebus.

In the aftermath, Quasimodo accepts the relationship between Esmeralda and Phoebus. Encouraged by them, he leaves the cathedral and is welcomed by the people of Paris.

Voice cast

Tom Hulce as Quasimodo, a kind-hearted bell-ringer of Notre Dame, who was born with several deformities, possessing a hunched back among other physical abnormalities.
Demi Moore as Esmeralda (singing voice by Heidi Mollenhauer), a young Romani woman who dwells within the streets of Paris.
Tony Jay as Judge Claude Frollo, a powerful Parisian justice minister, who, after a series of sensitive circumstances, becomes the begrudged caretaker of the deformed Quasimodo.
Kevin Kline as Captain Phoebus, a gallant war veteran summoned by Judge Claude Frollo to assist in the eradication of Paris' Romani community.
Paul Kandel as Clopin, the leader of the Romani people residing in Paris and is exceedingly protective of their headquarters, the Court of Miracles. He also serves as the narrator of the film, telling the film's events to a group of children at the beginning.
Jason Alexander, Charles Kimbrough, and Mary Wickes as Hugo, Victor, and Laverne respectively, a trio of sentient gargoyles belonging to Notre Dame. This was Wickes' final acting performance as she died a year before its release, at age 85. Jane Withers provided Laverne's remaining dialogue for the film.
David Ogden Stiers as the Archdeacon, the clergyman at the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris.
Corey Burton as the Brutish Guard.
Bill Fagerbakke as the Oafish Guard.

Production

Development

The idea to adapt The Hunchback of Notre Dame came from development executive David Stainton in 1993, who was inspired to turn Victor Hugo's novel into an animated feature film after reading the Classics Illustrated comic book adaptation. Stainton pitched the adaptation to studio chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg, who began assembling the creative team. He recruited directors Gary Trousdale and Kirk Wise by informing them that composer Alan Menken and lyricist Stephen Schwartz had committed to the project; he recruited Menken and Schwartz by informing them that Trousdale and Wise were on board. Neither party was aware they were being used as bait for the other, a strategy producer Don Hahn later described as entirely characteristic of Katzenberg's dealmaking.

At the time, Gary Trousdale had taken a sabbatical break after he directed Beauty and the Beast (1991). Instead, he spent several months developing storyboards for The Lion King (1994). Meanwhile, in 1992, lyricists Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty had pitched a project titled Song of the Sea, a loose retelling of the Orpheus and Eurydice myth with humpback whales. Following this, Trousdale and his directing and writing partner Kirk Wise had worked on the project for several months until they received Katzenberg's telephone call. "The phone rang," Wise recalled. "It was Jeffrey, saying, 'Drop everything. I got your next picture: The Hunchback of Notre Dame." According to Wise, he and Trousdale believed that it had "a great deal of potential... great memorable characters, a really terrific setting, the potential for fantastic visuals, and a lot of emotion."

During the initial story pitch to the studio's executive leadership, art director David Goetz opened the presentation with the words: "14th century Europe. A dark and dreary time. A time of hopelessness. A time of—" before Michael Eisner interjected: "A time of Euro Disney!" — a wry reference to the struggling French Disneyland theme park. The remark broke the tension but regardlessly, the pitch was approved yet accompanied with a persistent anxiety about how thematically dark a Disney animated feature could responsibly be. From there, production on The Hunchback of Notre Dame began in the summer of 1993.

In October 1993, Trousdale, Wise, art director David Goetz, Roy Conli, Ed Ghertner, Will Finn, Alan Menken, and Stephen Schwartz took a trip to Paris for ten days. Three days were devoted to an exploration of the Notre-Dame Cathedral, where the team took photographs and sketched areas of the religious site, included passageways, stairwells, towers, and a hidden room. Wise remembered sitting in the nave as he listened to the pipe organ: "The sound was so powerful, I could feel it thudding in my chest. I thought: This is what the movie needs to feel like." Murphy explained the shift: "We decided to make Phoebus more heroic and central to the story. Out of that decision grew the idea of some sort of a triangle between Quasimodo, Esmeralda, and Phoebus."

Irene Mecchi and Jonathan Roberts, who had rewritten the screenplay for The Lion King, were subsequently brought in, followed by the writing team of Bob Tzudiker and Noni White. Schwartz also contributed to the story development beyond the songs alone, including a suggestion that audiences be held in suspense about whether Phoebus would defy Frollo before he extinguishes the torch.

One of the production's pivotal changes was to relocate Claude Frollo's authority from the clergy to the secular realm. In Hugo's novel, Frollo is the Archdeacon of Notre-Dame, but Disney feared that presenting an evil clergyman would antagonize Christian organisations. Frollo was therefore made a judge and minister of justice, with the Archdeacon made into a separate character. Story supervisor Finn noted the narrative problem this created: "It doesn't make any sense for him to not be the Archdeacon, because what's he doing with Quasimodo? What possible relationship could they have? Which is what led to the backstory that became 'The Bells of Notre Dame'." Producer Don Hahn evaluated that one inspiration for Frollo was found in Ralph Fiennes's performance as Amon Goeth in Schindler's List (1993), who had murdered Jews yet lusted after his Jewish maid. The development team had come up with the names of Chaney, Laughton and Quinn—named after the actors who portrayed Quasimodo in preceding Hunchback film adaptations. However, Disney's legal department objected to the proposed names of the gargoyles, fearing that the estates of Lon Chaney, Charles Laughton, or Anthony Quinn would file a lawsuit over the unauthorized use of their names, so the idea was dropped. After several recording sessions and test screenings, Lauper and McMurray were called by the directors who released them from their roles. Jane Withers was hired to voice her six remaining lines.

thumb|right|Animation work on The Hunchback of Notre Dame was partially done at 1400 Air Way in [[Glendale, California, which was one of several headquarters for Walt Disney Feature Animation.]]

Katzenberg initially envisioned the film as a rock opera and sought Meat Loaf and Cher for Quasimodo and Esmeralda. However, negotiations between Disney and Meat Loaf's record company broke down. At the audition, Patinkin brought his own accompanist to rearrange the song "Out There" to his own interpretation. Trousdale and Wise later coached Patinkin through a dialogue scene, but after further explanations of the scene, Patinkin threw up his hands and said, "Guys, I'm really sorry. I can't do this." Quasimodo was originally portrayed as older and with more of a speech impediment during the early rehearsals, but Hulce commented that "we experimented, endlessly. At one point I was ready to call in and say 'Things just aren't happening'." Ultimately, the directors desired to portray Quasimodo with a younger voice different from the previous portrayals since "[Victor] Hugo described Quasimodo as 20."

Due to her deeper voice than actresses who had previously played Disney heroines,

For the role of Phoebus, co-director Kirk Wise explained that "As we're designing the characters, we form a short list of names...to help us find the personality of the character." Subsequently, the filmmakers modeled his portrayal on the personalities of Errol Flynn and John Wayne, and "One of the names on the top of the list all the time was Kevin Kline." was cast based on his brief appearance as Monsieur D'Arque in Beauty and the Beast, which was directed by Trousdale and Wise.

Broadway actor Paul Kandel was cast as Clopin after the directors watched his performance as Uncle Ernie in the musical The Who's Tommy. However, most animators were occupied with The Lion King (1994) and Pocahontas (1995) at the time, and as a result, more animators were hired from Canada and United Kingdom to join the production team for the film. As the development phase furthered along, most of the entire animation team moved out into a large warehouse facility on Airway in Glendale, California. As the Disney story artists, layout crew, and animators moved in their new quarters, they decided to name the building "Sanctuary".

Since Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988), other animators hired by Disney Feature Animation were from Germany, France, Ireland, and additional ones from Canada were involved in providing animation duties at the recently opened satellite studio, Walt Disney Animation Paris. Supervised by coproducer Roy Conli, 20 percent of the film was done there. To coordinate with the Burbank studio, the Brizzis traveled there with storyboards and conferred with the directors, animators, and layout team. Back in Paris, they discuss their animation dailies via video conferences provided by Compression Lab Industries' (CLI) video system. Meanwhile, at the Feature Animation Florida studio, which had been working on Mulan (1998), their first in-house production, at least seven animators penned about four minutes of screen time, which mostly involved Frollo and Quasimodo. The studio had also provided additional layout, cleanup, and special-effects animation.

During early development, Trousdale and Wise realized they needed crowds of people, but for this time, they wanted them to move as opposed to being traditionally drawn as painted backdrops. Recalling the wildebeest stampede in The Lion King (1994), they landed on the idea of using computer animation to generate them. For that reason, the CGI department, headed by Kiran Joshi, created the software Crowd to achieve large-scale crowd scenes, particularly for the Feast of Fools sequence and the film's climax. The software was used to create six types of characters—males and females either average in weight, fat, or thin—which were programmed and assigned 72 specific movements ranging from jumping and clapping. Digital technology also provided a visual sweep that freed Quasimodo to scamper around the cathedral and soar around the plaza to rescue Esmeralda. His resignation altered the creative dynamic significantly. Wise noted that the absence of executive oversight gave the production team greater creative latitude: "We were able to take more chances than we would have under the circumstances that we made Beauty and the Beast."

The film has many musical motifs that carry throughout the film, weaving their way in and out of various pieces of music, and having varying timbres depending on the action in the story at that point. The film's soundtrack includes a musical score composed by Menken, and songs written by him and Schwartz. The film's songs include "The Bells of Notre Dame" for Clopin, Frollo, and the Archdeacon, "Out There" for Quasimodo and Frollo, "Topsy Turvy" for Clopin, "God Help the Outcasts" for Esmeralda, "Heaven's Light" for Quasimodo, "Hellfire" for the Archdeacon and Frollo, "A Guy Like You" for the gargoyles, and "The Court of Miracles" for Clopin and the other Roma.

Three songs written for the film were discarded for the storyboarding process. Trousdale and Wise were not certain what musical number could be placed for the third act, though Menken and Schwartz conceived two love songs, "In a Place of Miracles" and "As Long as There's a Moon", between Esmeralda and Phoebus in the film. However, Trousdale and Wise felt the song took too much focus off of Quasimodo, and ultimately decided to have Clopin sing about sentencing Phoebus and Quasimodo to death for finding their Roma sanctuary. Menken and Schwartz had also written "Someday" originally for the film, but the directors suggested that a religious song be sung in the cathedral. The song was instead featured in the end credits. R&B group All-4-One recorded the song for the end credits of the North American English release, and by the British R&B girl group Eternal in the British English version. Luis Miguel recorded the version for the Latin American Spanish version, which became a major hit.

Themes and interpretations

The Hunchback of Notre Dames thematic concerns include infanticide, lust, damnation, and sin, as well as the belief in a loving, forgiving God. According to Mark Pinsky, it is also a "condemnation of abortion, euthanasia, and racism, and [a] moral resistance to genocide."

The Hunchback of Notre Dame was the first—and currently only—Disney animated feature to have a major focus on traditional religious faith; in this case, pre-Reformation Catholicism. In fact, the words "God," "Lord", and "Hell" are uttered more times in the film than in any other produced by Disney. The book The Gospel According to Disney explains that "it is the church... that interposes, or attempts to interpose itself between the villain and his evil intentions." During production, the studio executives expressed concerns about various aspects of the film, especially those relating to the religious content in the story, "for their failure to defend the poor and the powerless" and concerns that the story was "too controversial". though the film was reportedly delayed following Katzenberg's resignation from Disney.

The Hunchback of Notre Dame premiered on June 19, 1996, at the Louisiana Superdome in New Orleans, where it was played on six enormous screens. The premiere was preceded by a parade through the French Quarter, beginning at Jackson Square and utilizing floats and cast members from Walt Disney World. Attendees included Eisner, then-New Orleans Mayor Marc Morial, and the actresses who had voiced the Disney Princesses. The film was widely released two days later.

Marketing

As part of the promotion of the film, Walt Disney Records shipped two million products, including sing-along home videos, soundtrack CDs, and the "My First Read Along" novelized version of the film. Upon its release, The Hunchback of Notre Dame was accompanied by a marketing campaign of more than $40 million with commercial tie-ins with Burger King, Payless Shoes, Nestlé, and Mattel. By 1997, Disney earned approximately $500 million in profit with the spin-off products based from the film.

Home media

The Hunchback of Notre Dame was first released on VHS, standard CLV LaserDisc, and special edition CAV LaserDisc on March 4, 1997, under the Walt Disney Masterpiece Collection label. By mid-1998, the operating income of the VHS release had accumulated to $200 million. It was originally planned for a DVD release in December 2000 as part of the Walt Disney Gold Classic Collection, but instead, it was re-issued on March 19, 2002, as a special edition along with its direct-to-video sequel, The Hunchback of Notre Dame II (2002).

Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment released The Hunchback of Notre Dame on Blu-ray alongside its sequel in a Special Edition "2-Movie Collection" on March 12, 2013.

Reception

Box office

The Hunchback of Notre Dame grossed $21.3 million during its opening weekend, ranking in second place at the box office behind Arnold Schwarzenegger's Eraser. At the time, both Warner Bros. and Disney already had big summer hits with Twister and The Rock respectively. In a new box office strategy, Disney also included ticket sales which were sold from Disney Stores nationwide, which added about $1 million to the box office numbers.

In France, the film collected an opening gross of $6.5 million within its first five days of release, which was the country's third-highest opening of 1996, after Mission: Impossible and Independence Day.

Ultimately, the film grossed just over $100.1 million domestically. In foreign markets, by December 1996, the film became the fifteenth film that year to gross over $100 million, and went on to accumulate $225.2 million, surpassing Pocahontas $204.5 million international gross. Worldwide, The Hunchback of Notre Dame grossed over $325.3 million, making it the fifth highest-grossing film of 1996. Review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes gave the film positive rating based on reviews, along with an average rating of . The consensus reads, "Disney's take on the Victor Hugo classic is dramatically uneven, but its strong visuals, dark themes, and message of tolerance make for a more-sophisticated-than-average children's film." Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 from top reviews from mainstream critics, calculated a score of 74 based on 28 reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A" on an A+ to F scale.

Chicago Sun-Times film critic Roger Ebert rewarded the film 4 stars, calling it "the best Disney animated feature since Beauty and the Beast – a whirling, uplifting, thrilling story with a heart touching message that emerges from the comedy and song." In his review for the Chicago Tribune, Gene Siskel awarded the film (out of a possible 4) stars, describing the film as "a surprisingly emotional, simplified version of the Victor Hugo novel" with "effective songs and, yes, tasteful bits of humor." Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly graded the film an A, labeling it as "the best of Disney's 'serious' animated features in the multiplex era, (...) an emotionally rounded fairy tale that balances darkness and sentimentality, pathos and triumph, with uncanny grace."

Richard Corliss of Time magazine praised the film, stating that "the result is a grand cartoon cathedral, teeming with gargoyles and treachery, hopeless love and tortured lust" and also said "Alan Menken and Stephen Schwartz have written the largest, most imposing score yet for an animated film." Charles Spencer of The Daily Telegraph gave it a positive review, saying "it is thrillingly dramatic, and for long stretches you forget you are watching a cartoon at all... A dazzling treat." Variety also gave the film a positive review, stating that "there is much to admire in Hunchback, not least the risk of doing such a downer of a story at all" and also saying: "the new film should further secure Disney's dominance in animation, and connoisseurs of the genre, old and young, will have plenty to savor." Janet Maslin wrote in her The New York Times review: "In a film that bears conspicuous, eager resemblances to other recent Disney hits, the filmmakers' Herculean work is overshadowed by a Sisyphean problem. There's just no way to delight children with a feel-good version of this story."

Russian author Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn criticized Hunchback for "vulgarizing" the original novel by Victor Hugo, in particular by "provid[ing] Esmeralda with a happy end and blissful marriage instead of a tragic demise."

Upon opening in France in March 1997, reception from French critics towards Hunchback was largely positive. French critics and audiences found resonance in the film which recounted a real-life incident from August 1996 when French police raided a Parisian church and seized over 200 immigrants seeking refuge from deportation under France's strict expulsion laws. "It is difficult not to think of the undocumented immigrants of St. Bernard when Frollo tries to sweep out the rabble," wrote one reviewer.

Audience response

Arnaud Later, a leading scholar on Hugo, accused Disney of simplifying, editing, and censoring the novel in numerous aspects, including the personalities of the characters. In his review, he later wrote that the animators "don't have enough confidence in their own emotional feeling" and that the film "falls back on clichés." Descendants of Hugo bashed Disney in an open letter to the Libération newspaper for their ancestor receiving no mention on the advertisement posters, and describing the film as a "vulgar commercialization by unscrupulous salesmen."

Some audiences expressed concerns about whether the film was appropriate for children. Jason Alexander said that while "Disney would have us believe this movie's like the Ringling Bros., for children of all ages," he would not take his then-four-year-old child to view the film. Some audiences criticized the film for having "homosexual undertones", noticeably with the song "Out There", being the name of a gay pressure group and as a call to come out of the closet.

In June 1996, the Southern Baptist Convention voted overwhelmingly to urge its sixteen million members to boycott Disney films, theme parks, and merchandise, saying the company "disparages Christian values." The cause of the protests—unrelated to the film—stemmed from the company's domestic partnership policy and gay and lesbian theme days at Walt Disney World. Trousdale also claimed that Southern Baptists were outraged over the casting of Demi Moore as Esmeralda, as she had just come off of the film Striptease (1996), in which she played an exotic dancer. Disney officials would not comment on the motivation for the religious content displayed in the film beyond comments on the subject included in the film's press kit, with Disney vice president John Dreyer commenting, "The film speaks for itself." Nevertheless, there was praise from religious organizations for its portrayal of religion in the film. Louis P. Sheldon, a Presbyterian pastor and chairman of the Anaheim-based Traditional Values Coalition, said two months before its premiere: "I am thrilled at what I hear about Hunchback, that Disney is seeking to honour Christianity and its role in Western civilization. I only pray that it will accomplish much good in the minds and hearts of its viewers."

Following protests in the United States, thousands of British parents banned their kids from seeing The Hunchback of Notre Dame. In reaction to the controversy, Walt Disney Feature Animation president Peter Schneider said, "The only controversy I've heard about the movie is certain people's opinion that, 'Well, it's OK for me, but it might disturb somebody else." Schneider also stated in his defense that the film was test-screened "all over the country, and I've heard nobody, parents or children, complain about any of the issues. I think, for example, the issue of disabilities is treated with great respect." and "Quasimodo is really the underdog who becomes the hero; I don't think there's anything better for anybody's psychological feelings than to become the hero of a movie. The only thing we've been asked to be careful about is the word hunchback, which we have to use in the title."

Accolades

{| class="wikitable plainrowheaders"

! colspan="6" style="background: LightSteelBlue;" | List of awards and nominations

! Award

! Date of ceremony

! Category

! Nominee(s)

! Result

! Ref.

| Academy Awards

| March 24, 1997

| Best Original Musical or Comedy Score

| Music and Orchestral Score by Alan Menken; Lyrics by Stephen Schwartz

| align="center"|

| rowspan="13"| Annie Awards

| rowspan="13"| November 10, 1996

| colspan="2"| Best Animated Feature

| rowspan="13" align="center"|

| Best Achievement in Directing

| Gary Trousdale and Kirk Wise

| Best Achievement in Producing

| Don Hahn

| Best Achievement in Writing

| Tab Murphy, Irene Mecchi, Bob Tzudiker, Noni White, and Jonathan Roberts

| rowspan="3"| Best Individual Achievement in Animation

| James Baxter

| Russ Edmonds

| Kathy Zielinski

| Best Achievement in Music

| Composer: Alan Menken; Lyricist: Stephen Schwartz

| Best Achievement in Production Design

| David Goetz

| Best Achievement in Storyboarding

| Brenda Chapman and Will Finn

| rowspan="3"| Best Achievement in Voice Acting

| Tom Hulce

| Tony Jay

| Demi Moore

| Artios Awards

| November 12, 1997

| Best Casting for Animated Voice-Over

| Ruth Lambert

| align="center"|

| ASCAP Film and Television Music Awards

| 1997

| Top Box Office Films

| Stephen Schwartz

| align="center"|

| BMI Film & TV Awards

| 1997

| Film Music Award

| rowspan="2"| Alan Menken

| align="center"|

| Golden Globe Awards

| January 19, 1997

| Best Original Score

| align="center"|

| Golden Raspberry Awards

| March 23, 1997

| Worst Written Film Grossing Over $100 Million

| Tab Murphy, Irene Mecchi, Bob Tzudiker, and Noni White

| align="center"|

| rowspan="3"| Golden Reel Awards

| rowspan="3"| 1997

| Best Sound Editing – Animated Feature

| John K. Carr

| rowspan="3" align="center"|

| Animated Motion Picture Feature Films: Music Editing

| Kathleen Fogarty-Bennett, Mark Green, and Charles Paley

| colspan="2"| Animated Motion Picture Feature Films: Sound Editing

| Golden Screen Awards

| 1997

| colspan="2"|

| align="center"|

| rowspan="4"| Online Film & Television Association Awards

| rowspan="4"| 1997

| Best Score

| Alan Menken and Stephen Schwartz

| rowspan="4" align="center"|

| Best Original Song

| "Someday" Music by Alan Menken; Lyrics by Stephen Schwartz

| rowspan="2"| Best Voice-Over Performance

| Jason Alexander

| Tom Hulce

| Satellite Awards

| January 15, 1997

| colspan="2"| Best Motion Picture – Animated or Mixed Media

| align="center"|

| Saturn Awards

| July 23, 1997

| colspan="2"| Best Fantasy Film

| align="center"|

| Young Artist Awards

| 1997

| colspan="2"| Best Family Feature – Animation or Special Effects

| align="center"|

The film is recognized by American Film Institute in these lists:

2006: AFI's Greatest Movie Musicals – Nominated
2008: AFI's 10 Top 10:
Nominated Animation Film

Franchising

Stage musical

The film was adapted into a musical theatre production, re-written and directed by James Lapine and produced by Walt Disney Theatrical, in Berlin, Germany. The musical Der Glöckner von Notre Dame (translated in English as The Bellringer of Notre Dame) was successful and played from 1999 to 2002, before closing. A cast recording was recorded in German. An English-language revival of the musical, with a revised book by Peter Parnell, premiered in San Diego, California on October 28, 2014.

Sequel

In June 1998, Disney had announced production had begun on a sequel titled The Hunchback of Notre Dame Deux: The Secret of the Bells, and was slated for release in fall 1999. However, the sequel was delayed from its planned fall release in order to accommodate the recording of "I'm Gonna Love You" by Jennifer Love Hewitt. The sequel reunited its original voice cast, with Hewitt, Haley Joel Osment, and Michael McKean voicing new characters. The film, titled Hunchback, would draw elements from both the animated film and Hugo's novel. In January 2021, Gad stated that the project was still in the works and that he and the studio were "getting closer" to making it happen.

In May 2023, Menken suggested that development on the live-action remake had stalled owing to the original film's content and themes: "It's a tough one, because the Hunchback movie, Hunchback story involves a lot of real, real issues that are important issues and should be explored to be discussed. And there has to be an agreement about how we deal with those issues. You know, do we do a Hunchback without 'Hellfire'? I don't think so ... So it sits in this limbo right now."

Video games

In 1996, a tie-in game entitled The Hunchback of Notre Dame: Topsy Turvy Games was released by Disney Interactive for the PC and the Nintendo Game Boy, which is a collection of mini games based around the Festival of Fools that includes a variation of Balloon Fight.

La Cité des Cloches ( The City of Bells), a world based on The Hunchback of Notre Dame, appears in Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance.

In 2022, content of the film was made available within the Disney Magic Kingdoms game by Gameloft, introduced in a limited time event with a storyline that takes place after the events of the film.

Other media

Characters from The Hunchback of Notre Dame make occasional appearances at the Disney Parks and Resorts. Clopin's Music Box is a small attraction based on the film in Fantasyland at Disneyland and Hong Kong Disneyland has the Clopin's Festival of Foods restaurant.

Quasimodo, Esmeralda, Victor, Hugo, Laverne and Frollo all made guest appearances on the television series House of Mouse. Frollo could also be seen amongst a crowd of Disney villains in the direct-to-video film Mickey's House of Villains.

Notes

References

Bibliography

External links

The Hunchback of Notre Dame: Comically Framing Virtue and Vice, chapter four in Mouse Morality: The Rhetoric of Disney Animated Film