A collection of new images from Steven Spielberg’s upcoming retelling of West Side Story have been released online.
Vanity Fair and the 20th Century Studios Twitter account have uploaded the first images from the film. The A-list director put together a cast including Ansel Elgort and Rachel Zegler to fill the shoes of the original performers.
Rita Moreno played Anita in the original 1961 film, but now the 88-year-old actress will play the owner of the corner store. Moreno said that this redo gives the filmmakers a chance to fix any problems with the classic film.
Moreno says Spielberg and screenwriter Tony Kushner “really wanted to right some…should I say wrongs? I don’t know if that’s…yes, that’s fair, because the [1961] film had a lot of things that were wrong with it, aside from the fact that it had a lot of things that were very right,” Moreno said.
She mentioned that she was one of only a few Puerto Ricans in the cast and that white actors with brown makeup played Puerto Ricans in the original film: “[Having a diverse cast is] what they were trying to fix and ameliorate, and I think they have done an incredible job.”
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Moreno served as an executive producer on the new film and even coached the Puerto Rican actors when she didn’t believe they were acting scared enough in a scene where cops come to break up a fight.
“I was using bad language and all that, and I said, ‘You are f***ed! You are f***ed if they catch you! You don’t have a chance,’” Moreno said. “And they’re all looking at me with big beautiful brown eyes. I said, ‘Talk to each other before you do the scene again! Scare each other!’”
Spielberg says he grew up with a mother who was a pianist playing classical music. The West Side Story soundtrack was the first mainstream music that was played in the Spielberg home.
“West Side Story was actually the first piece of popular music our family ever allowed into the home. 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,” Spielberg said. “West Side Story has been that one haunting temptation that I have finally given in to.”
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The story is a Romeo and Juliet-inspired tale that takes place post-World War II iwith a flurry of new immigrants arriving in New York. Puerto Rican native Maria (played by first-time movie actress Rachel Zegler) falls in love with Polish-descent Tony (Elgort). Tony once ran a local gang called the Jets who were enemies with the Puerto Rican gang, the Sharks, which was run by Maria’s brother, Bernardo (played here by another first-time movie actor, David Alvarez). With the Jets and the Sharks violently battling against each other, Maria and Tony’s love is in jeopardy.
West Side Story is currently set to hit theaters on December 18. It was expected that Spielberg would direct Indiana Jones 5 after this film, but that is reportedly no longer the case. Here is a roundup of everything we know about Indiana Jones 5.
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Petey Oneto is a freelance writer for IGN.
Source: IGN.com New Images Released for Steven Spielberg's West Side Story