Usnavi & Co. Are Free! Lin-Manuel Miranda’s In the Heights No Longer at The Weinstein Company
One of the biggest things I was worried about after the well-deserved fall of Harvey Weinstein was what would happen to In the Heights. After all, The Weinstein Company had the rights to the musical and were in the process of moving forward with a film adaptation. Thankfully, Lin-Manuel Miranda’s first Tony-winner is no longer in the hands of a company that made money for a monster.
According to Deadline Hollywood, the rights to In the Heights “quietly” reverted back to the show’s creators, Miranda and Quiara Alegría Hudes, before TWC’s bankruptcy. Part of their deal was that they needed to go into production by the end of 2017, or lose the rights, and production never happened.
Now, Miranda and Hudes are free to take the musical elsewhere. Disney is a strong contender, what with Miranda having become their go-to music guy with his involvement in writing music for Moana, starring in Mary Poppins Returns, and even writing the music for Maz Kanata’s place in Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Meanwhile, Jon M. Chu, who just wrapped directing Crazy Rich Asians for Warner Bros., is attached to direct In the Heights, so the film adaptation might find a home at Warner Bros.
Wherever it goes, I’m just grateful that TWC doesn’t have its claws in it anymore. Other films weren’t so lucky, and now that the company is going through bankruptcy proceedings, they have been “registered as assets and will have to wait for the bankruptcy outcome before the seven finished features can be released, and the 50 or so development projects frozen in place can move forward.”
Where do you think In the Heights should go? Are you excited about a film version? And most importantly, whom would you cast?
Discuss below!
(image: screencap)
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