Currently ruling the Great White Way with his hip-hop musical sensation Hamilton, Lin-Manuel Miranda is eyeing a Hollywood takeover. This week alone it was finally confirmed that he’ll join Emily Blunt in Disney’s Mary Poppins sequel (set for 2018) and his long-running Tony-winning musical, In the Heights is finally back in development over at the Weinstein Company.
The 2008 Broadway musical, set in the mostly Dominican neighborhood of Washington Heights, follows a large ensemble of characters trying to make it in New York City. It ran for 1,184 performances and closed in 2011, the same year that Universal Pictures halted its plan to turn the play into a movie.
As Miranda told The Hollywood Reporter last summer, “A lot of the reason the Universal version of Heights went away is that they were afraid they didn’t have a big enough Latino star to bankroll this movie.” But he was quick to add that, “The world has changed since then. You’re seeing the power of the Latino dollar in the marketplace more than ever, and now we’re aiming for a scrappy $15 million movie of Heights that is more in keeping with the spirit of the show.”
This latest adaptation — with a script by Quiara Alegria Hudes, who also wrote the book for the original musical — is expected to move ahead very soon, no doubt to capitalize on Miranda’s Hamilton buzz. It might take a while for the film to hit theaters — there’s no director attached yet — but in times like these, you just have to embrace what Abuela Claudia sings about: paciencia y fé.