Lin-Manuel Miranda is set to adapt The Warriors into a musical stage play-ay

The hottest musical writer of recent years will reportedly be adapting the 1979 film, The Warriors, into a stage musical. CAN YOU DIG IT? The cult Walter Hill film is a popular urban grit fairy tale that tells of a night amongst the many number of gang factions in New York City. The movie was based on the 1965 novel of the same name by Sol Yurick and illustrated by Frank Modell. Many character actors were involved with the production in their younger days, including James Remar, who currently can be seen in Oppenheimer, David Patrick Kelly, Mercedes Ruehl, and Lynne Thigpen.

Variety now reports that a source close to the subject has confirmed that Lin-Manuel Miranda is in the works to adapt the movie into a stage musical. The film isn’t exactly West Side Story, but it does involve rivalry between street gangs. The plot of both the film and novel concentrates on a fictional street gang in New York City, titular Warriors, who embark on a tense journey from the Bronx to their home turf in Coney Island after they’re blamed for the assassination of a respected ring leader for all the factions, Cyrus. While the movie isn’t a musical, it does feature music from Barry De Vorzon, Joe Walsh and Arnold McCuller.

Miranda is known for his revisionist creative outputs as he skyrocketed to pop culture notoriety with his historical reimagining hip hop musical Hamilton. Recently, the lyricist punched up some of the writing on the Kander and Ebb musical New York, New York, inspired by the 1977 film directed by Martin Scorsese. His musical In The Heights is a Tony Award-winner, which then became a film from director Jon M. Chu. Miranda also lent his talents to Disney animated films such as Moana and Encanto and recently re-adapted and wrote new music for the live-action remake of The Little Mermaid. Additionally, Miranda would direct the autobiographical musical Tick, Tick… Boom, which had garnered an Oscar nomination for the star, Andrew Garfield.

Interestingly, the Warriors novel author, Sol Yurick, thought the movie itself was a sugar-coated, watered-down interpretation of his book, which he initially wrote as a response to works like West Side Story that had portrayed street gangs in a rose-tinted light. The original story was much darker and illustrated the vivid breakdown of society.