Lin-Manuel Miranda's In the Heights gets a colorful, emotional trailer

A new trailer for In the Heights, the film version of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s other Tony Award-winning musical, introduces us to Miranda’s beloved Manhattan neighborhood in Washington Heights, where “streets of music” were made.

Before he was Hamilton, Lin-Manuel Miranda had the role of Usnavi, an immigrant from “the largest small town in the Caribbean,” who runs a corner bodega. The musical that Miranda wrote in his freshman year, because he is almost unbearably talented, is mainly about a lottery ticket that Usnavi discovers that he has sold in his bodega. But the plot is less important than the characters and the feeling of the show, which is mostly just a love letter to Miranda’s neighborhood.

The trailer mainly serves as an introduction to Usnavi and its neighborhood. Between choreographed, happy dance numbers and emotional moments that should be recognizable to fans of the musical, shots alternate: Usnavi and his crushed Vanessa in the ballroom, Abuela Claudia encourage the anxious and overworked Nina to fireworks.

Particularly noteworthy is that Usnavi has apparently made it back to the Dominican Republic. At the end of the musical he decides to stay in Washington Heights, even though he feels withdrawn. But the trailer starts with Usnavi telling a story to a group of children in a very tropical setting. Whether he’s just visiting or retired (hopefully after he married Vanessa), we’ll have to wait and see.

It also looks like In The Heights (2020) will address the fears of immigrant communities under our current administration. The threat of kicking out DREAMer is explicitly mentioned in the trailer.

In the film version Usnavi is played by Miranda’s Hamilton co-star Anthony Ramos. Jimmy Smits, Corey Hawkins of The Walking Dead and Stephanie Beatriz of Brooklyn Nine-Nine are also featured in the film. Miranda even has a cameo appearance as the Piragua guy, for whose signature song he apparently only needed 15 minutes.

An In The Heights movie was in progress after the Tony Award-winning Broadway run, but this project failed in 2011. The new adaptation was announced in 2016, to which the director of Crazy Rich Asians, Jon M. Chu, was attached was.

The Heights will be released in the summer of 2020. Until then, I’m here and look at the trailer again and try not to cry when the title song swells.

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