The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996 film) June 21, 1996 to generally positive reviews and was a commercial success, grossing over $325 million worldwide and becoming the fifth highest-grossing release of 1996. The film received Academy Award and Golden Globe Award nominations for Menken's musical score. A darker, more Gothic stage adaptation of the film, was rewritten and directed by James Lapine and produced by Walt Disney Theatrical in Berlin, Germany, as "Der Glöckner von Notre Dame", and ran from 1999 to 2002. A direct-to-video sequel, "The Hunchback of Notre Dame II", was released in 2002. In 1482 Paris, Clopin, a gypsy puppeteer, narrates the origin of
The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996 film) to write the screenplay, and it was decided early on that Quasimodo would be the center of the story, as he was in preceding live-action film adaptations. In the early drafts, Quasimodo served as a Cyrano between Phoebus and Esmeralda, but it was discarded to focus more on Quasimodo. Meanwhile, a love story between Quasimodo and Esmeralda was also conceived, according to Murphy, but "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." Some of the novel's key characters