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When you’re a jet, you’re a jet forever — or until you phone home. Steven Spielberg will premiere his new version of “West Side Story” on the big screen this December — a passion project for the legendary director that he said has been a “haunting temptation” for years. Spielberg, 73, told Vanity Fair recently …
When you’re a jet, you’re a jet forever — or until you phone home.
Steven Spielberg will premiere his new version of “West Side Story” on the big screen this December — a passion project for the legendary director that he said has been a “haunting temptation” for years.
Spielberg, 73, told Vanity Fair recently that he’s been imagining putting the classic lovers’ tale onto the screen since he was mesmerized by the music from the original Broadway production as a boy.
“‘West Side Story’ was actually the first piece of popular music our family ever allowed into the home,” Spielberg, who has directed Hollywood classics such as “ET” and “Indiana Jones,” told the magazine.
“I absconded with it—this was the cast album from the 1957 Broadway musical—and just fell completely in love with it as a kid. ‘West Side Story’ has been that one haunting temptation that I have finally given in to.”
The classic New York tale tells the story of two lovers from warring groups: Maria, a Puerto Rican transplant whose brother Bernardo is a leader of the “Sharks” street gang. And Tony, a former leader of “The Jets,” who battled The Sharks on the streets of 1950’s Hell’s Kitchen.
Maria will be played by first-time movie actress Rachel Zegler, while “Baby Driver” actor Ansel Elgort will star as Tony.
The Anita character, a confidant to Maria and girlfriend to Bernardo, will be played by Ariana DeBose, a broadway actress who got her start on the television series “So You Think You Can Dance.”
Maria’s immigrant story, Spielberg told Vanity Fair, is as pertinent now as it was when the show first hit Broadway more than half a century ago.
“I really wanted to tell that Puerto Rican, Nuyorican experience of basically the migration to this country and the struggle to make a living, and to have children, and to battle against the obstacles of xenophobia and racial prejudice,” he said.
To bring the tale to a modern audience, Spielberg teamed up with playwright Tony Kushner, who he’s worked with previously on “Munich” and “Lincoln.”
The movie will include the classic songs from the original Broadway production, but will modernize the backdrop and will star Hispanic and Puerto Rican actors in the roles of The Sharks, according to Vanity Fair.
One update to the script is the character “Doc,” a local shop owner whose store serves as neutral territory between the gangs, will be swapped out for a woman named Valentina.
Valentina is played by 88-year-old Rita Moreno, who won an Oscar for her role as the character Anita in the 1961 version.
Moreno told the magazine she’s encouraged by Spielberg and Kushner’s adaptation, which, she said, corrected “wrong things” about the original film.
One of the things they corrected the lack of Hispanic actors who were featured in the 1961 film.
“That’s what they were trying to fix and ameliorate, and I think they have done an incredible job,” she said.
The movie is expected to open nationwide soon before Christmas 2020.
