I love West Sude Story. I’d rather have him remake Jesus Christ Superstar. That film version was terrible.
Such a remake attempt of WSS will always pale in comparison to the original, which is a timeless classic, just short of perfection. I feel sorry for the cast in the remake.
I've always thought that if there was an award for the biggest disparity between a musical's musical elements and its book, West Side Story would win hands down. The music--Bernstein and Sondheim were at the height of their powers--great stuff--so that many of the songs have become classic. (Even if Bernstein did steal some of the melody for Somewhere from Beethoven's Fifth Piano Concerto...) But the dialogue--hoo, boy, is it preachy and wooden, approaching Terminal Earnestness. If the remake improves on that without screwing up the score, it could be great. One point that always struck me as funny--in the opening scene, the gang (all of whom are skilled dancers, which of course involves a high degree of athleticism and skill) crosses an outdoor basketball court and one of the gang members is thrown a basketball. He handles it so awkwardly it's embarrassing. Now, will they have the singers do their own numbers, or will they find a modern Marni Nixon to dub in the voices?
I think you're confused. Spielberg leapt at the chance to do The Post because 3 of his other projects from last year were shut down. He happened to see a new script by a brand-new writer who had never done a film before, knew it was a good idea, and rushed it into production. That's not exactly true. What does happen is they tell Spielberg what movies he can't make. If they won't give him $150 million for Robopocalypse, it ain't gonna happen. Spielberg is smart enough to never finance his own films. Note that The Post required financing from no less than seven different distributors and studios: DreamWorks Pictures Amblin Partners Amblin Entertainment 20th Century Fox Participant Media Pascal Pictures Star Thrower Entertainment and that was a relatively-modest $50 million picture on which all the cast members basically worked for scale. Go over to IMDB and look at the number of Spielberg projects that are in limbo. Where I think Spielberg is very smart is that he almost always has "backup" projects he can do, so that he's always busy. However, he's on record (from 2013) as saying he's not happy at the tendency for Hollywood studios to concentrate more on sequels, comic book movies, and action films and avoid dramas, historical pictures, and small comedies, which has limited his ability to do certain kinds of projects: Steven Spielberg Predicts 'Implosion' of Film Industry
My favorite movie of all time, being remade by my favorite director? A big fat NO THANKS. So much to get wrong. This is not one to revisit. You leave this alone Steven! But... Just for **** and giggles, let's cast: (There will be some lip synching involved...) Armie Hammer as Tony Benjamin Bratt as Bernardo Jennifer Lopez as Anita Selena Gomez as Maria Ryan Reynolds as Riff Rob Gronkowski as Ice Louie C.K. as Officer Krupke J.K. Simmons as Detective Shrank Taylor Swift as Anybodys Michael Pena as A-Rab Gael Garcia Bernal as Chino Samuel L. Jackson as m-fing Doc and in case you missed it, here's your.../s...because the cast won't look anything like this.