Steven Spielberg has been spending most of the year looking for the actors to lead his version of West Side Story, and according to THR, there was concern that because the search was taking so long, the remake might be shelved, just like Spielberg’s other long-in-development project The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara.
Performing the same role once occupied by Larry Kert on stage and Richard Beymer in the 1961 cinematic adaptation, Ansel Elgort will play Tony in the West Side Story remake.
But now that Elgort has been secured, West Side Story is on track to start rolling cameras in summer 2019, and presumably we’ll learn who’s filling out the rest of the cast in the coming weeks and months.