Weinstein Co. nabs Tony winner Lin-Manuel Miranda’s “In the Heights”

PanARMENIAN.Net - The Weinstein Company is in development on a movie version of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s musical “In the Heights”, which won the 2008 Tony Award for best musical, Variety reports.

Miranda is producing the project, which had been set at Universal with Kenny Ortega attached to direct and Miranda starring before the studio put it into turnaround in 2011.

Miranda wrote the music and lyrics for the musical and starred in the show’s lead role, earning him a nomination for the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical. “In the Heights” is set in Washington Heights in New York City and focuses on a bodega owner who’s closing his store and retiring to the Dominican Republic after inheriting his grandmother’s fortune.

“As a kid from Queens, I’ve always loved bringing New York stories to film,” said TWC’s Harvey Weinstein. “‘In the Heights and Lin Manuel brought Washington Heights to Broadway back in 2008 and in the process turned the theater world on its head. The movie musicals of the 1950s were incredible, but ‘In The Heights’ will revolutionize what movie audiences expect from the genre.“

Miranda is performing on Broadway in the lead role of Alexander Hamilton in the hit musical “Hamilton,” for which he wrote the book, music and lyrics. “Hamilton” was nominated for a record 16 Tony Awards, with the winners to be announced on June 12.

Scott Sanders and Mara Jacobs are producing the movie project along with Miranda through Scott Sanders Productions. They are working off of a script by Quiara Alegria Hudes, who wrote the book for the original stage show.

Meryl Poster, Harvey Weinstein’s longtime head of production and television, is on board as an executive producer. Poster executive produced “Chicago,” which won the Best Picture Academy Award in 2002 and the Oscar-nominated “Cider House Rules” (1999) and “Chocolat” (2000).

“In the Heights” was nominated for 13 Tony Awards and won four — Best Musical, Best Original Score, Best Choreography and Best Orchestrations. It also won a Grammy for Best Musical Show Album.

Miranda contributed the music in the cantina scene with JJ Abrams in “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” and will star opposite Emily Blunt in Disney’s “Mary Poppins Returns,” set to open on Dec. 25, 2018. Miranda will play a street lamplighter in the movie.

Sanders and Miranda worked together on the 2012 Disney movie “The Odd Life of Timothy Green.”