Entertainment - Media News Watch originally published at Entertainment - Media News Watch
No, not West Side Story, but an east side story. No, it’s not West Side Story. It’s an east side story.
The most popular musical writer in recent years is reportedly adapting the 1979 movie,
The Warrior into a stage show. CAN YOU DIG? The Walter Hill film, a cult urban grit tale, tells the story of a night in New York City amongst gang factions. The film was based on a 1965 novel by Sol Yurick, illustrated by Frank Modell. Many character actors were involved with the production in their younger days, including James Remar, who currently can be seen in Oppenheimer, David Patrick Kelly, Mercedes Ruehl, and Lynne Thigpen. A source close to the topic confirmed to Variety that Lin-Manuel Miranda was in the process of adapting the film into a stage show. The film isn’t exactly Westside Story
but it does feature rivalry between street-gangs. The film and novel both focus on a fictional New York City street gang, the Warriors, which embarks on a tense trip from the Bronx back to Coney Island, after being blamed for the murder of Cyrus, a respected ringleader for all factions. The movie is not a musical but it features music by Barry De Vorzon Joe Walsh and Arnold McCuller. Miranda is known for his revisionist creative outputs as he skyrocketed to pop culture notoriety with his historical reimagining hip hop musical Hamilton
. The lyricist recently rewrote some of the lyrics for the Kander and Ebb musical, New York New York which was inspired by the 1977 Martin Scorsese film. His Tony Award-winning musical In The Heights was adapted into a film by director Jon M. Chu. Miranda also lent his talents to Disney animated films such as Moana and Encanto and recently re-adapted and wrote new music for the live-action remake of The Little Mermaid. Miranda also directed the autobiographical musical, Tick Tick…Boom which garnered an Oscar nod for its star, Andrew Garfield. Interestingly, the Warriors
novel author, Sol Yurick, thought the movie itself was a sugar-coated, watered-down interpretation of his book, which he initially wrote as a response to works like West Side Story that had portrayed street gangs in a rose-tinted light. The original story was much darker and illustrated the vivid breakdown of society.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=notapKd0mOA
Entertainment - Media News Watch originally published at Entertainment - Media News Watch
