The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996 Film)

The Hunchback Of Notre Dame (1996 film)

The Hunchback of Notre Dame is a 1996 American animated musical-drama film produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation and released to theaters on June 21, 1996 by Walt Disney Pictures. The 34th animated feature in the Walt Disney Animated Classics series, the film is loosely based on Victor Hugo's novel of the same name. The plot centers on Quasimodo, the deformed bellringer of Notre Dame and his struggle to gain acceptance into society.

The film is directed by Kirk Wise and Gary Trousdale and produced by Don Hahn. The songs for the film were composed by Alan Menken and written by Stephen Schwartz, and the film features the voices of Tom Hulce, Demi Moore, Kevin Kline, Paul Kandel, Jason Alexander, Charles Kimbrough, David Ogden Stiers, Tony Jay, and Mary Wickes (in her final film role). It belongs to the era known as Disney Renaissance, which refers to the ten-year era between 1989 and 1999 when the Walt Disney Animation Studios returned to making successful animated films, recreating a public and critical interest in the Disney studios. The film is considered to be one of Disney's darkest animated motion pictures similar to films such as The Black Cauldron. and released during the same period of time in the 1990s that the first-run episodes of Disney's still-popular Gargoyles, with a similar degree of "darkness" in its own storyline, were airing on American television.

A direct-to-video sequel, The Hunchback of Notre Dame II, was released in 2002.