The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996) on Netflix

G19961h 31mAnimation Drama Family

Quasimodo, the deformed bell ringer of Notre Dame, has never left the tower where Judge Claude Frollo keeps him. At the Festival of Fools he meets the Romani dancer Esmeralda.

Netflix3.8/5
IMDb7.0/10186,686 votes
Rotten Tomatoes80%

Trailer

Watch the trailer on YouTube

Plot summary

In 1482 Paris, Clopin, a puppeteer, tells children the story of the bell ringer of Notre Dame. Twenty years earlier, Judge Claude Frollo named an infant Quasimodo and had him raised inside the cathedral, away from the city. Now a young man, Quasimodo keeps the bells and talks with three living gargoyles, Victor, Hugo and Laverne, his only company. They urge him to attend the Festival of Fools, though Frollo forbids it and warns that the crowd will mock his appearance. Quasimodo goes anyway, and there he meets Esmeralda, a Romani woman who defies Frollo, and Captain Phoebus of Frollo's guard. Frollo intends to purge Paris of its Romani population, and Esmeralda has already defied him in public.

Cast

Show all 20 cast

Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996)

Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.

Jeffrey Katzenberg recruited directors Gary Trousdale and Kirk Wise by telling them Alan Menken and Stephen Schwartz had already committed, and recruited the songwriters by telling them the directors were already on board; neither pair knew they were used as bait for the other.
When art director David Goetz opened the film's story pitch to Disney executives with "14th century Europe. A dark and dreary time," studio chief Michael Eisner interrupted with "A time of Euro Disney!", a joke about the struggling French Disneyland park, which broke the tension before the pitch was approved.
Pop singer Cyndi Lauper was the first actor cast on the film, and after being told her audition was "hilarious and sweet" she assumed she had landed Esmeralda, only to learn she had actually been cast as a gargoyle named Quinn.
Mandy Patinkin auditioned for Quasimodo hoping to channel Charles Laughton's 1939 performance and brought his own accompanist to rearrange "Out There," but after directors Gary Trousdale and Kirk Wise coached him through a dialogue scene, he threw up his hands and said, "Guys, I'm really sorry. I can't do this," and walked out to argue with the songwriters.
Anthony Hopkins was formally offered the role of Frollo and turned it down, and the studio had already made an animation test using dialogue recorded from his Hannibal Lecter performance in The Silence of the Lambs before he declined.
After the film's first cut of Hunchback was rated PG, producer Don Hahn had the sound team quiet a sniffing sound effect and bury the word "sin" under louder background noise, and the softened version came back with a G rating on resubmission.
In June 1996 the Southern Baptist Convention voted to urge its sixteen million members to boycott Disney over its domestic-partnership policy and gay theme days, unrelated to the film, though director Gary Trousdale said Baptists were also angry that Demi Moore, fresh off Striptease, played Esmeralda.