What Changes Have Been Made for the Jennifer Lopez-Led Kiss of the Spider Woman Movie Musical? | Playbill

Film & TV News What Changes Have Been Made for the Jennifer Lopez-Led Kiss of the Spider Woman Movie Musical?

The screen adaptation is making its world premiere at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival.

The movie musical adaptation of Broadway's Kiss of the Spider Woman is making its world premiere at the ongoing 2025 Sundance Film Festival, with in-person screenings held January 25-February 2 in Park City, Utah. Before the film makes its way to theatres, Vanity Fair has released an inside look, including a breakdown of some of the changes made from the stage show. 

As previously reported, the screen version of John Kander, Fred Ebb, and Terrence McNally's 1992 musical is written and directed by Bill Condon (Dreamgirls). Film star and recording artist Jennifer Lopez is starring in the title role, with Tonatiuh as Luis Molina and Diego Luna as Valentin Arregui. According to Sundance's listing for the film, the cast also includes Broadway alum Josefina Scaglione (West Side Story), Bruno Bichir, and Aline Mayagoitia. The listing also reveals that the film has a runtime of 128 minutes, while describing Condon's work as marrying "a textually rich historical and political drama with the flashy technicolor extravagance of an old Hollywood musical."

Based on Manuel Puig's 1976 novel, Kiss of the Spider Woman centers on a pair of cellmates in an Argentine prison. Valentin is a political revolutionary while Molina is a gay window dresser who takes care of him by telling him the stories of his favorite films, many of which star his favorite movie star of all, Aurora. But the one story he fears telling is Aurora's greatest role: The Spider Woman.

Vanity Fair's report reveals that in Condon's adaptation, these stories take the form of snippets of a fictional film within a film, starring Ingrid Luna (Lopez) and shot separately from the prison scenes. "I wrote it as two movies, and we made it as two movies," Condon told VF. "That left us the means to make a lavish Hollywood movie musical—because it was only 35 minutes." 

Other changes Condon has implemented include a "heated and romantic" reimagining of the relationship between Valentin and Molina for the new adaptation, rather than downplaying the story's queerness as he observed other adaptations to do. “[The 1985] film was so meaningful to me as a younger gay man, to see the movie star of the time playing this gay character and the kind of attention that movie got,” Condon said. “Similarly, to place this story on a Broadway stage, even in the ’90s—not only the gay parts of it, but also the brutality of it—was a difficult proposition, and again broke some real ground there.” 

Finally, several songs have reportedly been cut from the track list of the stage show (to avoid characters "simply breaking out into song," Condon said), though VF did not specify which ones. 

READ: Schedule of Upcoming Movie Musical Adaptations

The Kiss of the Spider Woman novel was adapted by Puig himself into a 1983 stage play, and then into an Academy Award-winning film in 1985 starring Broadway favorite Raúl Juliá. John Kander, Fred Ebb, and Terrence McNally's stage musical version expanded the story somewhat, making Aurora a character who appears in a number of fantasy sequences. Chita Rivera created the role and won a Tony Award for her performance, later succeeded by Vanessa Williams in her Broadway debut.

The musical has been rumored to be making a return for some time in some form. A reading was held in 2015 with Audra McDonald, Alan Cumming, and Steven Pasquale. More recently, Washington, D.C.'s Kennedy Center was poised to stage a new revival as part of its Broadway Center Stage season, but it was ultimately pulled and replaced with the staging of Spamalot that subsequently transferred to Broadway. At the time, Kennedy Center representatives cited casting complications due to plans for a Broadway revival. A Broadway return for the work has yet to materialize.

Though she is also a recording artist and self-produced a musical film titled This Is Me... Now: A Love Story that was released in 2024, Spider Woman will be Lopez's debut in a musical theatre piece. She was previously set to star in a live TV production of Bye Bye Birdie for NBC, though that was ultimately thwarted due to scheduling conflicts. As early as 2016, she was eager to have a musical written for her by Hamilton writer Lin-Manuel Miranda. Lopez also has a development deal with Concord, whose Concord Theatricals controls licensing rights for Kiss of the Spider Woman. It's unclear if the upcoming film is a part of that partnership. One of Lopez's first feature films is 1997's Selena, which while not expressly a musical, featured the singer-songwriter lip-syncing as late Latine singing star Selena Quintanilla-Pérez.

Barry Josephson, Tom Kirdahy, and Greg Yolen are producing with Ben Affleck and Matt Damon for Artists Equity, the film's studio and lead producer. Michael Joe, Danie Bernfeld, and Kevin Halloran are executive producing for Artists Equity along with Condon for 1000 Eyes, Lopez and Elaine Goldsmith-Thomas for Nuyorican Productions, and D. Matt Geller for Josephson Entertainment. Luna, Pamela Thur, Sam Weisman, Daniel Weisman, and Margaux Weisman are also executive producing.

 
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