“One of the hardest things to do is to make a successful musical,” he said. “I don’t mean financially successful, I mean artistically. Where all the art forms — the choreography, the music, the dancing, the sets, the songs, all build toward these moments. When they’re all working in tandem, I do not think there is a more thrilling art form, full stop.”

But, he added, the challenge of creating those moments becomes even greater onscreen. “When you make a movie musical, the suspension of disbelief is much higher and it’s harder to buy people singing,” he said. “Maybe it’s because the settings are more realistic, but when someone bursts into song in a movie, for some reason we really have to earn it.”

And still more art forms have to work together with film: “You’re adding cinematography, and you’re adding camera movement so it’s even harder to make the magic trick, but when it does it’s even more powerful.”

What do those moments look like? The end of “Moulin Rouge!” is one of his favorite examples. “When they’re all singing ‘Roxanne’ and everyone’s necks are popping out of their heads holding that note, there’s nothing like it,” he said. “But it’s a harder spell to cast.”

Mr. Miranda dismisses critics who find musicals too corny or unrelatable. “There are some people who say, ‘I don’t really like musicals,’” he said. “That means that music is very divorced from their life experience and they’re not willing to let music bleed into everyday speech or an everyday moment. Growing up in a Latino household, it’s the most natural thing in the world for music to bubble over into conversation.”