Steven Spielberg's WEST SIDE STORY is Coming To Disney+ Soon
Steven Spielberg’s feature film adaptation of the hit Broadway musical West Side Story is set to debut on Disney+ on March 2nd. I actually really enjoyed this new version of West Side Story. Spielberg did an incredible job bringing this story to life for a new generation of audiences and it was recently nominated for seven Academy Awards including Best Picture.
So, if you haven’t seen the movie yet, you’ll be able to watch it soon! In addition, the ABC one-hour special Something’s Coming: West Side Story – A Special Edition of 20/20 is available to stream on Disney+ now.
West Side Story tells the story of forbidden love between two teenagers – Tony (Ansel Elgort) and Maria (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 Mouthpiece (Ben Cook), Action (Sean Harrison Jones), Jets leader Riff (Mike Faist), Anybodys (Ezra Menas), 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 previously 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.”