Development In March 2014,
Steven Spielberg first seriously expressed interest in directing an adaptation of
West Side Story, prompting
20th Century Fox to acquire the rights to the project. In a 2020 interview, Spielberg told
Vanity Fair: "
West Side Story was actually the first piece of popular music our family ever allowed into the home. I ... fell completely in love with it as a kid". Spielberg would ultimately dedicate the film to his father,
Arnold, who died during production at age 103. The following year, he further explained why he felt the time had come for a new film adaptation of the musical: "Divisions between un-likeminded people is as old as time itself. ... And the divisions between the Sharks and the Jets in 1957, which inspired the musical, were profound. But not as divided as we find ourselves today. It turned out in the middle of the development of the script, things widened, which I think in a sense, sadly, made the story of those racial divides – not just territorial divides – more relevant to today's audience than perhaps it even was in 1957".
Pre-production In January 2018, Spielberg was figuring out his next two directorial vehicles. Sources said that he was eyeing a fifth
Indiana Jones film and then would either precede or follow quickly with another film. It was reported that one might be his dream project, a new version of
West Side Story. This was followed a few days later with an open casting call issued for the characters María, Tony, Anita and Bernardo. Additional open casting calls were hosted in New York City in April, and in
Orlando, Florida, in May. In July,
the fifth Indiana Jones film was pushed back, allowing Spielberg to begin pre-production on
West Side Story.
Justin Peck was hired to choreograph the film in September, with
Ansel Elgort cast in the film as Tony. In November,
Eiza González emerged as a contender for the role of Anita.
Rita Moreno, who played Anita in the 1961 film, plays Valentina and also serves as an executive producer for the film. In January 2019, newcomer
Rachel Zegler was picked from over 30,000 applicants to play María, with
Ariana DeBose,
David Alvarez, and Josh Andrés Rivera also cast as Anita, Bernardo, and Chino, respectively.
Isabela Merced also auditioned for Maria. In March,
Corey Stoll and
Brian d'Arcy James joined the cast. A month later, the rest of the ensemble comprising the Jets and Sharks factions was announced.
Mike Faist was personally invited to audition by Spielberg, who approached him after seeing him in
Dear Evan Hansen on Broadway in 2016. He originally auditioned for Tony, before being cast as Riff instead.
Filming Filming took place in
Harlem and other Manhattan locations and in
Flatlands, Brooklyn in New York City in July 2019. There were ten days of shooting in
Paterson, New Jersey, where an outdoor set was built, in August. Filming also took place in
Newark and other parts of
Essex County, New Jersey. It wrapped on September 27 for a total of 79 days of shooting. All of the sets were constructed at a warehouse at
Steiner Studios. As one of the film's executive producers, Moreno was on-set for a large portion of production, often consulting with Peck on choreography. The scene was rehearsed with an
intimacy coordinator to ensure DeBose's safety during the scene: Moreno, who recalled crying hysterically and being unable to stop when she shot the same scene for the 1961 film, was surprised that such a position existed upon being told about it in a joint interview with her and DeBose. She also had the honor to do
clapperboard for the film's famous "puddle shot" of Tony stepping into a large puddle of water and making it become a pool of rippling light while singing "María". That shot was the last to be filmed on the final day of principal photography, as it was a last-minute suggestion made by cinematographer Janusz Kamiński to Spielberg following completion of the Balcony scene. He went on to mention that its execution was also laid upon the film's lighting team: "We had our lights rigged on the dimmer so when the camera was turning around, some sections of the scene would dim out, another section would dim up with the lights. You set the light so it's in one direction, then when you turn around, you have to either cut or relight or do lights in the dimming board so you can fade the lights in, or fade the lights out, so you can maintain the romance and beauty of the shot". Andy Aaron, who served as
sound effects recordist, added that the dance footsteps during the sequence were recorded live on set, allowing those tracks to be used in the final sound mix without the music intruding. In conclusion, Kamiński added that the shot "gives a very clear indication to the audience what this particular scene will be about. It's about two teams competing against each other in terms of which team has the better dancers, better performers, more charming and more enticing". This moment from the film went
viral on social media, and filmmaker
Guillermo del Toro described it as "extremely hard to execute". Rachel Zegler also noted the shot's significance, describing it as "very Spielberg-esque." Spielberg and Sondheim initially wanted to cut "
I Feel Pretty" from the film. Its presence in the original musical, right after the rumble, was largely done against the wishes of Sondheim: he and Bernstein had been instructed by the producers to add an upbeat song after intermission to start Act 2, and so the song was written in protest. Sondheim would later remark that he was embarrassed by its lyrical content, to the point that he allowed it to be cut from the 2020 Broadway revival directed by
Ivo van Hove. Spielberg, likewise, questioned whether the upbeat song would still work without an intermission between it and the rumble. It was ultimately due to the intervention of Tony Kushner that the song remained, as Spielberg later explained, "Tony [Kushner] explained to me, and then I explained to Stephen... that this is the first time in our story that the entire audience is ahead of María's story. And the audience will feel very protective of her because we know she's about to find out".
Choreography created the film's new choreography while paying homage to the original choreography by
Jerome Robbins. Choreographer Justin Peck, cinematographer Janusz Kamiński, and Spielberg worked closely on how the film's choreography would work in concert with the camera. Spielberg was constantly present during the film's dance rehearsals and would use the camera on his hand-held
iPhone to figure out how to frame the shots. Peck noted that dance in movie-musicals had grown into something of a joke in the past several decades, with the 1961 film receiving some light mockery for depicting violent gang warfare with ballet movements. Mindful of the new film's more realistic approach to material, he chose to treat the dance as symbolic of the unity between the gangs: "We have to remember that it is still a musical and that there's a unique kind of expression that exists in it. This isn't full blown realism, literal realism". Peck also highlighted the skirt flaring in "America" and Tony and María's dance at the gym as direct "quotes" of the Robbins choreography. "America", which in the 1961 film takes place on a rooftop at night, was restaged to take place on the streets of New York during the day. The shoot took 10 days at locations across Harlem, Queens, and Paterson. Ariana DeBose's dance shoes melted and had to be replaced multiple times throughout the shoot, due to a combination of hot weather and the intensity of the choreography. To distinguish the two gangs from one another visually, he had the Jets dressed in cool-toned colors to reflect "the steel, the concrete, the streets of New York City as it was in the 1950s" and the Sharks in warm-toned colors to represent "where they've come from of Puerto Rico, of the island, having a tropical feel, many of the dresses of the Sharks, I reserved all of the floral pattern for that group for the Puerto Rican community". == Musical numbers ==