Oscar-winning filmmaker Invoice Condon is again with “Kiss of the Spider Girl,” his newest film musical starring a worldwide music celebrity enjoying the topic of public adoration.
An adaptation of the Tony-winning 1993 Kander and Ebb Broadway musical, which itself is an adaptation of the 1976 novel by Manuel Puig, stars Diego Luna as political prisoner Valentín, who’s thrown right into a cell with window dresser Molina (newcomer Tonatiuh.) To go time, the latter recounts the story of his favourite Hollywood musical starring display screen siren Ingrid Luna (Jennifer Lopez,) subsequently juxtaposing the pair’s dreary actuality inside a Nineteen Seventies Argentinian jail with the Technicolor fantasy of Luna’s melodrama “Kiss of the Spider Girl.”
The movie is the primary musical adaptation Condon has each written and directed since “Dreamgirls” starring Beyoncé in 2006, which earned two Oscars. It had its world premiere on the Sundance Movie Pageant 2025, sparking measurable awards buzz for its stars, particularly breakout Tonatiuh (“Carry On,” “Promised Land.”)
“Kiss of the Spider Girl” has additionally been a years-long labor of affection for Lopez, who fills the footwear of the late Tony winner and fellow Puerto Rican icon Chita Rivera, who originated the multi-faceted position of Aurora on Broadway. The star and government producer first previewed the movie to IndieWire in December 2024, saying, “It was my first musical, in all probability since [‘Selena’], if you happen to think about ‘Selena’ a musical. However this was a correct musical the place I actually get to play three completely different characters in a approach. And so it was an enormous challenge for me.”
Lopez, the primary girl to concurrently have a number-one album and a number-one movie in america, later advised IndieWire at Sundance that the musical style itself is “the place I acquired the thought to sing and dance and act and never simply do one factor.”
In his assessment of “Kiss of the Spider Girl,” IndieWire’s Ryan Lattanzio particularly highlights how the movie differs from Greatest Image winner “Chicago,” which Condon wrote. “That movie relied on zooms, close-ups, and harsh cuts on our bodies, whereas the metafictional ‘Kiss of the Spider Girl’s’ musical scenes are shot stagelike, with actors like Lopez, Tonatiuh, and Luna within the body high to toe.”
Roadside Points of interest will launch “Kiss of the Spider-Girl” in theaters on Friday, October 10. See the trailer beneath, which teases Lopez’s rendition of “I Do Miracles.”