J.J. Abrams and Hamilton's Lin-Manuel Miranda Wrote Music for Star Wars

Talk about wanting to be in the room where it happens: Last night on The Tonight Show, J.J. Abrams revealed that he and Hamilton creator and star Lin-Manuel Miranda wrote music together for a scene in Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

Abrams explained that when he saw Hamilton, Miranda—who was taking a break from performing that night—approached him at intermission and said, jokingly, “‘If you need music for the Cantina, I’ll write it,’” Abrams told Fallon. “And then he walks off. And I’m like, Does he know?”

Abrams revealed that The Force Awakens has “a scene that’s our version of the Cantina scene” that composer John Williams didn’t want to write the music for. So Abrams emailed Miranda. “I said ‘I know you were kidding, but if you actually want to write this music, I’m working on something—’ and he said, ‘I’ll drop everything,’” Abrams said. “He and I were sending back and forth music files, and he’s singing and playing instruments. This whole thing was nuts. And now in the movie, in this one sequence, is music that Lin-Manuel Miranda and I wrote.” (It's not the first time Abrams has penned music for a movie: He got his start composing the score for the Troma film Nightbeast.)

Miranda tweeted that he and Abrams “worked on it between 6pm & 7:30 on 2 show days for the past 2 months. JJ is the best. Can't wait to see.”

Twitter gleefully responded to the news with the #Force4Ham hashtag, which blends Hamilton lyrics with images from Star Wars. As you might imagine, it’s pretty much the best thing ever: