New York comes alive in the first trailer for In… | Little White Lies

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New York comes alive in the first trail­er for In The Heights

12 Dec 2019

Words by Charles Bramesco

A lively street scene with a crowd of people, including a couple dancing energetically in the foreground.
A lively street scene with a crowd of people, including a couple dancing energetically in the foreground.
Lin-Manuel Miranda’s pre-Hamil­ton suc­cess leaps onto the sil­ver screen in 2020.

Though Hamil­ton may have been the work to make Lin-Manuel Miran­da a house­hold name, that was far from his big break­out. He’d already estab­lished him­self as a king of the New York the­ater cir­cuit with In The Heights, anoth­er orig­i­nal rap-musi­cal that raked in the Tony gold.

With legal­i­ties and con­tracts keep­ing Hamil­ton out of movie the­aters for the time being, Warn­er Bros. did the next best thing and brought Miranda’s pre­vi­ous tri­umph to the big screen with an eye on 2020. Today, the first trail­er for this big Hol­ly­wood musi­cal — one of an increas­ing­ly rare breed — brings its immer­sive vision of Wash­ing­ton Heights to the Internet.

On the hottest day of a scorch­ing sum­mer, the pre­dom­i­nant­ly Lati­no neigh­bor­hood sets the scene for a tale of love and strug­gle with a star­ry ensem­ble cast. (The Lat­inx-for­ward line­up includes Antho­ny Ramos, Leslie Grace, Jim­my Smits, and Stephanie Beat­riz, to name only a few.) While the trail­er gives only the vaguest notion of what this film will actu­al­ly be about, it would appear that it all has some­thing to do with sav­ing the neigh­bor­hood and pre­serv­ing what makes it home.

The real focal point of the trail­er con­cerns the grand pro­duc­tion num­bers, which plop hun­dreds of extras in the streets for a clas­si­cal MGM-style spec­ta­cle. Direc­tor Jon M. Chu, a recent favorite for cul­tur­al­ly spe­cif­ic stu­dio tent­pole Crazy Rich Asians, brings a mas­sive sense of scale to each and every block of the Heights.

Chu’s last film felt like a moment of cel­e­bra­tion for his com­mu­ni­ty, a chance to see their cul­ture in liv­ing col­or and on the biggest nation­al stage avail­able. The Lat­inx response on Twit­ter to the trail­er has had a sim­i­lar ring to it, as view­ers and crit­ics alike rejoice at the sight of a big-tick­et mul­ti­plex movie cater­ing to an audi­ence that’s long been mar­gin­al­ized by Tinseltown.

In the Heights comes to the­aters in the US and UK on 26 June, 2020.

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