Ortega IN THE HEIGHTS

The director who brought you all those High School Musical movies and also the Michael Jackson‘s rehearsal footage, This Is It, Kenny Ortega may not helming FOOTLOOSE the remake, but he’s got himself another musical gig in the pocket. According to Variety, Ortega is set to direct the big screen version of IN THE HEIGHTS. The Tony Award winning broadway is a musical with music and lyrics by Lin-Manuel Miranda and a book by Quiara Alegría Hudes. The story explores three days in the characters’ lives in the New York City Dominican-American neighborhood of Washington Heights with the score featuring hip-hop, salsa, merengue and soul music…

Unlike any other musical movie based on broadway that tends to recast its original stage actors, IN THE HEIGHTS movie will have Lin-Manuel Miranda attached to reprise his starring role. The movie’s going to use his music as well. And Quiara Alegria Hudes, is writing the script.
“a bodega owner who inherited his grandfather’s lottery windfall plots his retirement to a Dominican Republic beach. As he bids farewell to his customers on the block, he becomes conflicted about leaving behind a group that has become family.”

This is where Ortega lives and breathes. The big reason why he exited FOOTLOOSE remake was because Paramount wanted an edgier drama with less emphasis on music and a budget under $25 Million, that’s not what Ortega had in mind obviously, he lives and breathes musical, you tell him to do any differently, he’ll say goodbye faster than you can say ‘what happened?’
I’m not saying I’m a fan of Ortega as a filmmaker but hey, the man wants to stick with his style and his genre, that I can respect. But… those High School Musical movies were unbearable, no offense to those of you fans of Efron and Hudgens out there.

Ortega brought the IN THE HEIGHTS project to Universal and pitched it himself, convincing the execs that there’s nobody more perfect for this job than him, that he has a life connection to the story, he’s seen the Broadway show six times since it opened. I kid you not, why would you want to watch the same Broadway show 6 freakin’ times? Holy smokes!
Universal said yes, gave the greenlight.. if you ask me, probably because they just didn’t want to hear any more of Ortega’s begging and decided to just give him want he wanted.
On the other hand, Universal is going gun-ho for musical movies, MAMMA MIA 2 is on the horizon, and there’s HAIRSPRAY 2 and also the big screen version of WICKED in development