Lin-Manuel Miranda is winning all the awards.
In June, the entertainer extraordinaire and lyrical assassin won three Tony awards for his triumphant Broadway play Hamilton (the show won 11 Tonys in total). He won a Pulitzer earlier this year, also for Hamilton. He already has two Grammys, an Emmy, and a MacArthur “Genius” grant.
All he needs to complete an ”EGOT”—the acronym for winning an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony, a feat only 12 performers in history have done—is an Oscar. And he’ll probably get one of those next year.
Miranda co-wrote the music to Disney’s upcoming animated adventure, Moana. The film stars Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson as the demi-God Maui who accompanies the young titular explorer (voiced by newcomer Auli’i Cravalho) on her quest to find a mythical island. Moana will be Disney’s first Polynesian princess. If you watched the Olympics on NBC last night (Aug. 7), you may have seen the film’s latest trailer.
Given Disney’s Oscar track record and Miranda’s musical prowess, Moana is a favorite to win next year’s Oscar for best original song. (Disney last won the award in 2013 for Frozen.) If that happens, Miranda will be the thirteenth “EGOT” recipient, solidifying his mastery of theater, music, television, and now film.
He would join a legendary company of performers that includes Mel Brooks, Audrey Hepburn, Rita Moreno, and Whoopi Goldberg to win all four major awards. Miranda would become only the third person ever to win all four and a Pulitzer, attaining the fabled ”PEGOT.” One of the other two, Richard Rodgers, now has a Broadway theater named after him—the same place where Miranda’s Hamilton is housed.
Miranda won his first Tony in 2008 for his musical In the Heights. In 2009, he won a Grammy for the same play. In 2014, he won an Emmy for writing the lyrics to “Bigger!”—a song performed by Neil Patrick Harris at the Tony awards the year before. Only Miranda wins awards for songs he wrote for award shows where he’s already won awards.
The lyricist, who left his lead acting role in Hamilton in July, will soon take his versatile skill set back to Disney, starring opposite Emily Blunt in the studio’s Mary Poppins sequel. Perhaps that movie will bring both him and Disney even more awards.
Moana comes out this November.