Lin-Manuel Miranda May Not Be Done With 'Hamilton'

After a full year on Broadway, it looks like Hamilton's creator and star might finally be handing over the reins to the title role. On June 2, The Hollywood Reporter reported that sources claim Lin-Manuel Miranda will leave Hamilton after his contract expires in July, though Miranda has not confirmed this. But if he does leave the show this summer, would Lin-Manuel Miranda ever return to Hamilton ?

If the departure does happen, it would likely be due to Miranda's extremely jam-packed schedule, which could make a return difficult. After all, when he's not busy carpool karaoke-ing it up with James Corden, writing op-eds for The New York Times , caring for his 1.5-year-old son, or getting himself nominated for a whopping three Tony Awards, he has quite the career to focus on. In addition in helping to mount the Hamilton national tour, he's also got a Weinstein-produced feature film of In The Heights coming down the pipeline, a plum role playing opposite Emily Blunt in the new Mary Poppins , and a gig writing the score for Disney's next big animated movie, Moana.

In short, he's kind of living the dream — he said as much in an interview with Rolling Stone, expounding on his work on Moana. "I'm here because The Little Mermaid f*cked my sh*t up when I was nine, and I have never been the same since. Now I'm working with the original directors of The Little Mermaid on this animated musical, writing songs and chasing stories," he told the magazine. On top of that long laundry list of projects, he also revealed that he's writing a new project — perhaps for the big screen, or maybe for the stage again. As he explained, "There's an idea I'm chasing down now that I think is a movie musical, but again, I could be lying to myself just to be making a stage musical, like I did with this."

When Rolling Stone asked if he'd made up his mind about what to do when his Hamilton contract is up, he had the following (pretty vague) response:

"I don't know that I want to break the news here. But I can tell you that with In the Heights, I did a year. I did a year and got out. And that show was as successful and joyous as anything I've ever done. But I still needed time to write, and so I did a year."

It's certainly worth nothing, then, that after Miranda left the Broadway version of In the Heights in 2009, he returned to the national tour of the show in 2010 when it played in Los Angeles for a few weeks, according to the Los Angeles Times. So if he does leave Hamilton after a year just like he did with In the Heights, it's likely that he'd be open to returning for a portion of the national tour.

And if Miranda were to leave and then return to the show, what if he didn't go back to the title role he's played since the beginning? What if he changed things up on us and played Aaron Burr instead? He joked to Rolling Stone that it's like choosing between the plum roles of Valjean and Javert — as he explained, "Do you want to play the virtuous guy with the crazy high notes who's onstage more? Or do you want to play the badass who's always a step behind him?"

Wouldn't it be awesome if he got to do both? Let's tack that on to Miranda's ultra-packed roster of upcoming projects, that may or may not include more Hamilton.