Hollywood’s New Crown Prince of Musicals
Photographs by Jake Michaels
Even before he signed on to the Hollywood adaptation of Wicked, Jon M. Chu helped his characters defy gravity. In a scene from the director’s forthcoming musical film In the Heights, a torrent of emotions literally sweeps the lovebirds Nina and Benny off their feet. As they sing the ballad “When the Sun Goes Down,” the fire escape on which they’re perched tilts, and the world shifts sideways. They leap onto the side of their apartment building, dancing weightlessly in the twilight glow.
This isn’t how the original Broadway production staged the song, but it’s the way Chu’s imagination works: A love song is also a chance to challenge the laws of physics. His cinematic version of the Tony-winning musical by Lin-Manuel Miranda and Quiara Alegría Hudes, about a tight-knit immigrant community living in the Upper Manhattan neighborhood of Washington Heights, works the same way. The movie isn’t a re-creation of its source material but a spectacle that makes a few New York blocks feel like a universe.
Though Chu is a film director, it may be more appropriate to think of the 41-year-old as a magician whose favorite trick is injecting wonder into stories, even those grounded in reality. His movies are maximalist feats of controlled chaos committed to celluloid: Dance-offs are staged in the pouring rain, weddings take place in indoor jungles, and a neighborhood gossip session turns into a Busby Berkeley–style number at the local pool. With his most recent film, the 2018 hit , Chu showed that he could, through the same sleight of hand, revive a stale genre while providing a launchpad for Asian movie, while its cast—the first all-Asian ensemble in a studio film in 25 years—went on to score a slew of and .
