Why Steven Spielberg Decided to Remake West Side Story

Acclaimed filmmaker Steven Spielberg has revealed why he decided to remake the hit 1961 musical West Side Story. Throughout his highly impressive career, Spielberg has won three Oscars, pushed the boundaries of filmmaking, and can even be credited with launching what is widely known today as the “summer blockbuster.” Yet throughout his lengthy filmography, cinema’s 74-year-old living legend has never taken on a musical until now.

Upon its initial release in 1957, West Side Story could only be seen as a Broadway stage production by Stephen Sondheim and Leonard Bernstein. The production was such an enormous success that by 1961, a feature film adaptation was released, directed by Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins. The film continued the success of the stage production, going on to win 10 Oscars and solidifying its place as one of the most successful stage to screen adaptations of all time. Given the film’s rather lofty status, a West Side Story remake is not only a hugely daunting prospect for any filmmaker, but it could also be argued that the film was so successful and beloved that there’s no need at all to bother trying to rebooting it.

Yet despite these sorts of reservations, if anyone was ever going to stand a chance of successfully remaking West Side Story, it seems logical that it would be Spielberg. His adaption (which is still set in the 1950s) will officially release next month, and promises to be quite the spectacle. But with Spielberg’s filmmaking track record covering everything from dinosaurs to bicycle-riding aliens, it might seem strange to some that he would choose to focus on remaking a 60-year-old musical instead of doing something new. As Yahoo reports, Spielberg’s fascination with West Side Story stems from his childhood. Read the director’s full explanation below:

“I have been challenged by what would be the right musical to take on. And I could never forget my childhood. I was 10 years old when I first listened to the West Side Story album, and it never went away. I’ve been able to fulfill that dream and keep that promise that I made to myself: You must make West Side Story. Divisions between un-likeminded people is as old as time itself. And the divisions between the Sharks and the Jets in 1957, which inspired the musical, were profound. But not as divided as we find ourselves today. It turned out in the middle of the development of the script, things widened, which I think in a sense, sadly, made the story of those racial divides — not just territorial divides — more relevant to today’s audience than perhaps it even was in 1957.”

The original West Side Story musical tells the story of a young love affair in the middle a New York gang rivalry. The original story was modelled after Shakespeare’s timeless classic Romeo and Juliet, and featured large scale dance numbers in New York City’s Upper West Side. Unfortunately, although the story focuses on two gangs (one Puerto Rican and the other white) few of the actors in the 1961 film were actually even Hispanic. Instead, white actors in makeup were used – a mistake that Spielberg has taken pains not to repeat in his movie remake.

Anyone who is even remotely familiar with Spielberg knows that he’s a genuine force to contend with when it comes to awards season honours. West Side Story isn’t likely to appeal to as wide of an audience as some of his previous work has, but with modern society as fractured as it often is, Spielberg could certainly be on to something when he says that this latest cinematic effort is perhaps “more relevant” than ever. And given Spielberg’s life-long promise to himself to reboot this iconic film that meant so much to him as a young man, it’s safe to say that the newest West Side Story is in safe hands.

Source: Yahoo

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Mike Jones
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Mike Jones is an author, screenwriter, world traveller and cinephile. His work has been featured in print and online in a variety of publications, and he’s also a Berlinale Talents alumnus. Cinema has always moved him in a big way and aside from having seen The Talented Mr Ripley more times than any other living person, he maintains a pretty darn healthy physical media collection. His favourite filmmakers include: Jordan Peele, David Lean, Alfred Hitchcock, Mike Leigh, Steven Spielberg, the Dardenne Brothers, Noah Baumbach, Michael Haneke, Barry Jenkins and Andrea Arnold. Often jet-lagged, Mike once turned down a certain A-list celebrity’s offer to join them for a night of partying after a strange encounter in an airport.

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