Steven Spielberg’s next movie will beIndiana Jones 5, which is currently due out June 19, 2025.We previously reportedthat Spielberg would follow Indy with a remake ofWest Side Storyand he was currently casting the lead roles. However,Varietynow reports that Spielberg might be shuffling up his slate. He recently held a table read for an untitled biopic about famous composerLeonard Bernstein, who wrote the music forWest Side Story. Bernstein was also a closeted homosexual who had a complicated marriage with Chilean-born American actressFelicia Cohn Montealegre. Obviously a giant of American music, a Bernstein biopic is a story worth telling with the kind of personal touches that could make for compelling drama.
But the Bernstein biopic isn’t set in stone. Variety says that this is just Spielberg’s process for how he decides on what to do next. For example, he was going to follow upReady Player OnewithThe Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara, but that petered out when he couldn’t find a suitable young actor to play Mortara, so he moved on to directThe Postinstead. A similar situation is happening withWest Side Story, not in that Spielberg is moving on, but that the Bernstein biopic may come together a little faster, in which caseWest Side Storywould come second.
Either way, Variety notes that whatever film he goes with as his follow-up toIndiana Jones 5, he won’t shoot another movie until the beginning of 2019, and he’ll be using the rest of 2018 to prep. Personally, I’m fine with whatever Spielberg wants to do, and certainly findWest Side Storyand a Leonard Bernstein biopic as intriguing projects for the director. However, it remains to be seen how much of 2019 he’ll spend onIndiana Jonesbefore moving on to a follow-up.
Spielberg’s new movie,Ready Player One, will premiere at SXSW before opening on March 28th.
