Before there was Hamilton, there was In the Heights — Lin-Manuel Miranda’s other award-winning hip-hop musical, this time about community and gentrification in the Washington Heights neighborhood of Manhattan. And while a Hamilton film is unlikely to happen in the next decade with audiences still flocking to the theatre (where tickets cost roughly $96,000), the big screen adaptation of In The Heights is finally moving forward with a director and studio attached.
According to The Hollywood Reporter{
A film version of In The Heights has been in the works for a long time — and Broadway types have certainly had to wait for it — with the early rights acquired by Universal. The Weinstein Co. later got a hold of them in 2016 after Hamilton became a Broadway phenomenon, but that version hit a roadblock when TWC filed for bankruptcy.
The show is set over the 4th of July weekend in Washington Heights, when a power blackout, romantic entanglements, financial tension and a winning lottery ticket sets the neighborhood’s inhabitants on a collision course. With a bit of patience and faith, fans of the show can breathe in the knowledge that Usnavi’s adventures in the barrio should finally end up in cinemas. It’s all early days and there’s no release date yet, but with a director and a studio in place hopefully it won’t be long now.
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