How Alan Menken And Glenn Slater Crafted The Music Of ‘Spellbound’

There’s no bigger name in the game than Alan Menken when it comes to making princess songs. It’s why Skydance Animation asked the legendary eight-time Oscar winner to write the music and score for its new animated musical Spellbound.

In the film, now streaming on Netflix, Rachel Zegler stars as Princess Ellian, a teenager who seeks to break a spell that turned her royal parents (Nicole Kidman and Javier Bardem) into monsters. John Lithgow, Jennifer Lewis, Tituss Burgess and Nathan Lane also voice characters in the whimsical fairytale epic.

The Little Mermaid, Aladdin and Beauty and the Beast composer Menken was joined by frequent collaborator Glenn Slater, who has worked on projects such as Tangled and served as the project’s lyricist.

“Glenn Slater really captures the feeling that goes along with Alan’s music in such a beautiful way,” Zegler says in an exclusive new featurette about the making of the film’s music. “Alan and Glenn together as a team is a match made in heaven.

Zegler worked on voicing Ellian over the course of five years. She says she first came onto the project as a scratch vocalist to sing for demo recordings, but was eventually brought on to voice Ellian for real. “I worked on it steadily throughout Shazam and Snow White, going into different studios all around the world,” Zegler told Variety earlier this year during her cover story interview, raving about the joys of recording voiceover from anywhere in the world. “Javier was in Jordan doing Dune, so he would literally get off set, sand everywhere, and get in the booth!”

“This girl is incredible. I mean, she has the most superb voice,” Kidman says of Zegler in the new featurette. “The music is beautiful, and it’s also classic.”

Singing Menken and Slater’s music is Zegler’s own real life fairytale. “I’m very thankful,” she says. “Alan did the soundtrack of my childhood, and now the soundtrack of my first animated movie.”

In an interview with Variety, Menken and Slater break down their process for crafting the music of Spellbound. In the interview they discuss how they wanted to make sure they were “honoring exactly how people would act in the real world.” They also discuss how excited they were when Zegler signed on to play princess Ellian.