The most hyped movie of 2015 is, obviously, Star Wars: The Force Awakens. The most hyped Broadway show of 2015 is Hamilton. These two dramas seem to have very little in common: One is a fantastical space opera, the other is a historically accurate hip-hop musical. And yet the Force has reached across galaxies and genres to bring these two together, as Star Wars director J.J. Abrams revealed to Jimmy Fallon on the Tonight Show on Monday.
While seeing Hamilton, Abrams met the show’s writer and star, Lin-Manuel Miranda, who jokingly offered to write music for the cantina scene in The Force Awakens. (The cantina scene in the original Star Wars famously features a band of Bith aliens playing lively jazz music.) As it turns out, Abrams had already shot “our version of the cantina scene,” and composer John Williams wasn’t interested in writing music for it, so Abrams took Miranda up on his offer. “He and I were sending back and forth music files, and he’s singing and playing instruments—this whole thing was nuts, and now in the movie, in this one sequence, is music that Lin-Manuel Miranda and I wrote,” said Abrams.
Miranda confirmed on Twitter that he had not thrown away his shot at composing music for Star Wars:
Star Wars fans and Hamilton buffs will surely agree on one thing: How lucky we are to be alive right now!
