What is the most cherished movie from your early childhood? Probably not The Warriors, Walter Hill’s fierce thriller about New York gang battles. But as Lin-Manuel Miranda says with a grin: “Our friend’s older brother had the VHS …” Which is how four-year-old Miranda found himself watching the film that, 40 years later, the Hamilton composer has turned into a musical concept album with playwright Eisa Davis.

He describes the nefarious mood in the room as the video played. “Here’s something you’re not supposed to be seeing. But let’s watch it. This is what New York is really like at night.” The cult 1979 film follows a Coney Island clan on a hair-raising journey home from the Bronx after being falsely accused of killing the leader of the city’s biggest gang. They encounter “every fear you’re supposed to have as a New Yorker” says Miranda. “Falling into the train tracks. The wrong cop on the wrong night. Stepping into the wrong neighbourhood at the wrong time when some shit that has nothing to do with you pops off.”

The film is propelled by a rock soundtrack with suspenseful synths, as well as songs like Nowhere to Run – played “for all you boppers out there” by an enigmatic DJ. It was adapted from Sol Yurick’s 1965 novel (itself inspired by Xenophon’s ancient epic Anabasis, about a Greek army’s homeward odyssey) and Yurick referenced rock’n’roll, the Beatles and pachanga music throughout his tale.

The album was created in the same mould as Jesus Christ Superstar and the Who’s Tommy, which were both released as LPs before becoming stage musicals. The former was “a north star for us”, says Miranda.

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Miranda’s chief change was to make all the Warriors female, a decision inspired by the Gamergate incident in 2014, which he sums up as “terminally online dudes doxing women who dared to like video games”. That misogynistic behaviour reminded Miranda of the “malignant chaos” in the film that’s caused by Luther shooting Cyrus, the city’s almighty gang leader who was proposing a truce among the tribes; Luther then blames the Warriors. Miranda and Davis’s gang share a sisterly solidarity as they essentially reclaim the night. Cyrus is now female too, played by Lauryn Hill.

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The big question is: will Miranda and Davis’s Warriors get all dressed up and hit the stage? Miranda thinks back to when Hamilton tickets were gold dust. With the album of The Warriors, he says, “you’re not getting the soundtrack to a show you can’t see. You are getting the thing we made. That feels enormously gratifying.” But he admits a theatrical version would be “enormous fun”, and they are open to the idea. All you boppers out there: The Warriors’ journey surely won’t end here.