Steven Spielberg’s ‘West Side Story’ remake will start filming next year.
The 71-year-old film director has been forced to jiggle around his work schedule for 2019 after ‘Indiana Jones 5’ was pushed back until 2021 while Jonathan Kasdan rewrites the script but, rather than waste time waiting for it to go into production, he’s decided to start working on his version of the crime musical.
According to Discussing Film, Spielberg is hoping to start production on ‘West Side Story’ next July as two separate casting calls were sent out in January and April of this year in the hope that 20th Century Fox can find its lead roles.
Spielberg will no doubt be happy to see the musical get off the ground as he admitted back in 2014 that he was keen to remake the popular theatre show.
He said at the time: "Well, you know something, ‘West Side Story’ is one of my favourite Broadway musicals and one of the greatest pieces of musical literature, my goodness, one of the greatest scores and [it has] some of the greatest lyrics ever written for a musical, so just let me put it this way: it’s on my mind."
Meanwhile, ‘Indiana Jones 5’ was originally scheduled for release in July 2019 and later pushed back to July 2020 but will now come out on July 9, 2021.
The script was originally written by David Koepp but he’s no longer available to work on the project because of his directorial commitments to ‘You Should Have Left’.
It is not clear if a rewrite of the film will bring back Shia LaBeouf’s ‘Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull’ – the 2008 fourth installment of the archaeological adventure franchise – character Mutt, as Koepp previously admitted the son of Indiana Jones didn’t feature in his draft.
West Side Story to film next year
