Steven Spielberg and his wife Kate Capshaw are pictured here at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.
“Something’s Coming” from famed director Steven Spielberg.
Speculation that Spielberg is planning a remake of “West Side Story” is true, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Back in 2014 movie blogs were all over Spielberg mentioning during a “Good Morning America” interview that he was noodling a potential remake of the classic Broadway musical about a pair of star-crossed teen lovers.
A 1961 film adaption starred a young Natalie Wood and Richard Beymer as the lead characters Maria and Tony.
“Well you know something, ‘West Side Story’ is one of my favorite Broadway musicals and one of the greatest pieces of musical literature, my goodness, one of the greatest scores and some of the greatest lyrics ever written for a musical so just let me put it this way: it’s on my mind,” he reportedly said at the time.
Those hoping it would come to pass can take heart in a few lines in The Hollywood Reporter piece on Spielberg, which looks at his past with DreamWorks and some of his future plans.
“And then, there’s a potential remake of ‘West Side Story’ — which would be a Fox/MGM co-production — for which Tony Kushner is working on a script,” the report says. “Spielberg has dreamt of adapting it ‘for decades,’ securing rights after trying to get them 15 years ago.”
Kushner is best known as the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright of “Angels in America,” the 1993 drama that centered on the AIDS crisis in the gay community. It later was made into a miniseries for HBO.
Kushner worked on the screenplays for two Spielberg-directed films, “Munich” and “Lincoln.”
The 1961 version of “West Side Story” won 10 Academy Awards, including for best picture.
