Like Fiddler on the Roof or The Sound of Music, West Side Story locates the joys that endure in hard times. For the new film’s dance sequences, Spielberg recruited Justin Peck, resident choreographer for the New York City Ballet. For the new script, he turned to Angels in America playwright Tony Kushner, who previously worked with him on Munich and Lincoln, to craft an updated story that retains the familiar songs but embeds them in a more realistic cityscape. That realism also applied to casting. Many of the “Puerto Ricans” in the original movie were white actors in brown makeup. Spielberg only wanted performers with Hispanic backgrounds to play Hispanic characters, and he estimates that 20 of the 33 Puerto Rican characters are specifically Puerto Rican or of Puerto Rican descent. “They brought an authenticity,” he says. “They brought themselves, and everything they believe and everything about them—they brought that to the work. And there was so much interaction between the cast wanting to be able to commit to the Puerto Rican experience. They all represent, I think, a diversity, both within the Puerto Rican, Nuyorican community as well as the broader Latinx community. And they took that seriously.”

“The cast brought an authenticity,” says the director. “They brought themselves—and everything they believe—to the work.”

The film stars newcomer Rachel Zegler in the role originated onscreen by Natalie Wood—purehearted Maria, part of the wave of Puerto Rican migrants who traded one island for another when they came to New York seeking a new life in the post–World War II economic boom. Her streetwise Casanova is Tony (Baby Driver actor Ansel Elgort, taking over the part played by Richard Beymer), who once led a gang of local toughs known as the Jets, but has since outgrown them. Tony’s old friends are engaged in an escalating battle for control of the neighborhood against Puerto Rican rivals who call themselves the Sharks, led by Maria’s brother Bernardo (David Alvarez, one of the original leads of Billy Elliot the Musical, playing the role that earned George Chakiris a best supporting actor Oscar).