Director Jon M. Chu Talks Adapting Lin-Manual Miranda’s In The Heights
Crazy Rich Asians director Jon M. Chu is currently working to adapt the Lin-Manual Miranda’s pre-Hamilton musical In The Heights from the stage to the screen. It’s something of a passion project for the director, who says the story of immigrants in search of the American dream is one he knows well.
“I was looking for a story that meant something more personal to me,” said Chu in an interview with Collider. “It’s hard [to] transition from a show to a movie, so we just kept breaking it and breaking it and breaking it, and I think we got a really great combination, and it’s nice to be at Warner Bros., the same studio that’s doing Crazy Rich Asians.”
While Chu is preparing the project, the director has taken some inspiration from some decidedly non-musical sources. “I sometimes think of Do the Right Thing, which is not a musical, but has a really cool vibe to it, and it speaks some truths, but is sort of in this visual world that I love and has some pop to it. I think of Annie Hall. The playfulness of Annie Hall where it’s not this typical love story but it has the freedom do really interesting things whether they’re drawing on the screen or breaking the fourth wall. So this has a little bit of that.”
In The Heights will be filming next summer on location in NYC’s Washington Heights. It’s scheduled to open in June of 2020. In the meantime, you can check out Chu’s latest film, Crazy Rich Asians, when it hits theaters on August 15th.
(Photo credit: Getty Images)
