‘West Side Story’: Read The Screenplay For Steven Spielberg And Tony Kushner’s Take On Iconic Musical

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Editors note: Deadline’s Read the Screenplay series debuts and celebrates the scripts of films that will be factors in this year’s movie awards race.“I believe that great stories should be told over and over again, in part to reflect different perspectives and moments in time into the work,” Steven Spielberg says of his motivations to craft a new take on the beloved classic musical West Side Story that was both reverent to the original 1957 Broadway production and the subsequent Oscar-winning 1961 film and filled with fresh, relevant inspiration.“It’s very intimidating to take a masterpiece and make it through different eyes and different sensibilities without compromising the integrity of what is generally considered the greatest music ever written for the theater,” Spielberg added of the intent to honor the source material developed by stage director and choreographer Jerome Robbins, composer Leonard Bernstein, lyricist Stephen Sondheim and playwright Arthur Laurents (and later filmmaker Robert Wise) – all inspired, of course, by the framework of Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare’s eternally enduring tragedy about star-crossed young lovers. “But we also knew we had to make a movie for our times and make it with a contemporary understanding and with contemporary values that we subscribe to.”Spielberg turned to his screenwriting collaborator, Tony and Pulitzer Prize winner Tony Kushner (Angels In America), to subtly reframe the story.

Having previously worked with Spielberg on Munich and Lincoln, Kushner was keenly familiar with his friend’s desire to re-examine the musical, which Kushner himself had long worshipped.“I was moved by how many of our current struggles Steven felt could be explored in this 60-year-old