west side story

DIRECTOR Steven Spielberg STARRING Ansel Elgort, Rachel Zegler, Corey Stoll, Rita Moreno, Kyle Allen ETA 18 December 2020

Aged 73, Steven Spielberg is making his first ever musical… and what a musical, daring to reinterpret the 1961 movie by Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins, which danced off with 10 Oscars.

The key to this rendition by Spielberg and screenwriter Tony Kushner, who previously penned Munich and Lincoln for the legendary director, is returning to Arthur Laurents’ 1957 book, which formed the basis of the original Broadway production, with music by Leonard Bernstein and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim. Laurents criticised the ’61 movie for “bogus accents, bogus dialect, bogus costumes”, and this version will likely be a grittier, more authentic telling of the racial rivalry between New York street gangs the Jets (white) and the Sharks (Puerto Rican). The star-crossed lovers whose relationship only intensifies the gangs’ hatred of each other will be played by Ansel Elgort and newcomer Rachel Zegler.

“Our version is not meant to wipe out the original film, which is a masterpiece,” says Kushner. “There are many different versions possible of a work of art like West Side Story.” Spielberg, meanwhile, pledges “electrifying energy.” Well, it certainly has to be a step up from the last time Spielberg produced a remake of a Robert Wise movie – that was Jan de Bont’s The Haunting.

GO BIG SCREEN The dazzling choreography demands it.