Vanity Fair released images of Steven Spielberg’s new film adaptation of the Broadway classic “West Side Story” on Monday.
The glamorous stills from the movie show Ansel Elgort as Tony, Rachel Zegler as Maria, Broadway star Ariana DeBose as Anita, David Alvarez as the infamous Bernardo, and the original Oscar winning Anita, Rita Moreno, in a new role created for Spielberg’s production — Valentina.
Despite the fact that no official trailer has dropped yet, Collider is already pegging Spielberg’s “West Side Story” as a likely Oscar nominee for next year, thanks to the films history. The 1961 film received an impressive 10 Oscars. The cast includes screenwriter Tony Kushner, the man behind “Lincoln,” which won multiple Academy Awards, including best picture and best director.
Spielberg told Vanity Fair that he’d been “making ‘West Side Story’ in his head for a very long time,” since he was a young boy in the 1950s.
In fact, before the original film had been released, Spielberg said he would listen to the soundtrack and try to imagine the story behind it.
But Spielberg isn’t choosing to remake “West Side Story” simply because he liked it as a child. The director decided to remake it now to send a message.
“This story is not only a product of its time, but that time has returned, and it’s returned with a kind of social fury,” Spielberg told Vanity Fair. “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.”
The film wrapped production in Brooklyn in September 2019. It is set to be released on December 18 of this year, reports Deadline.