Steven Spielberg’s WEST SIDE STORY Featurette Offers a Behind-The-Scenes Look
20th Century Studios has released a new featurette for Steven Spielberg’s upcoming adaptation of the classic 1957 Broadway musical West Side Story. This video offers a behind-the-scenes look at the making of the film and as you’ll see, Spielberg is very happy and excited about what he’s done with this movie.
West Side Story tells the story of forbidden love between two teenagers – Tony, who is played by Ansel Elgort, and Maria, who is played by newcomer Rachel Zegler. The story also revolves around the rivalry between two street gangs, the Jets and the Sharks, who are of two different ethnic backgrounds.
The members of the Jets include Anybodys (Ezra Menas), Mouthpiece (Ben Cook), Action (Sean Harrison Jones); Jets leader Riff (Mike Faist); and Baby John (Patrick Higgins). Then there are the Sharks, including Maria’s brother and leader Bernardo (David Alvarez), Quique (Julius Anthony Rubio), Chago (Ricardo Zayas), Chino (Josh Andrés Rivera), Braulio (Sebastian Serra), and Pipo (Carlos Sánchez Falú). The film also stars Ariana DeBose (Anita), Ana Isabelle (Rosalia), Corey Stoll (Lieutenant Schrank), Brian d’Arcy James (Officer Krupke), and Curtiss Cook (Abe).
When talking about adapting the story for modern times, Spielberg explained: “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. 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 script for the movie comes from Angels in America playwright Tony Kushner, who previously worked with Spielberg on Munich and Lincoln, and it’s explained that he had “to craft an updated story that retains the familiar songs but embeds them in a more realistic cityscape.”
West Side Story hits theaters on December 10th, 2021.