Can you dig it?
If so, you might be alone, because the news that Lin-Manuel Miranda has chosen his next stage project has not been met with as much enthusiasm as one would expect.
According to Deadline, the multi-time Tony and Grammy Award winner is planning to adapt Walter Hill's cult 1979 futuristic thriller The Warriors as a stage musical.
The movie, which was based on Sol Yurick’s 1965 novel of the same name, is set in a near-future New York which has been ravaged by gang violence, with various different factions fighting for control of the city. One such group, the titular Warriors, must travel 30 miles, from the north end of the Bronx to their home turf in Coney Island in southern Brooklyn, after they are framed for the murder of a respected gang leader.
Hill reflected on the movie's renewed popularity in a 2016 interview.
"I love the fact that people still enjoy something I did what, 37 years ago? It makes an old man happy. I'm surprised by it. But I loved working with my cameraman Andy Laszlo in shooting it, and I loved working with my cast, who were incredibly trusting of this crazy old f*cker that was making the movie. They didn't get it, I don't think—costumed gangs running around New York?—but they just went with it."
The premise could certainly work as a musical, but would it still be The Warriors, or something more akin to West Side Story? This seems to be the major concern for many fans of the film and book, who are not happy about the prospect of such an anarchic, borderline nihilistic story being toned down or "neutered" for the stage.
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