You cannot escape as Kiss of the Spider Woman ramps up to its release. After dropping the movie musical's title track, the new film has released a new song. Well, technically a new old song. Listen to Jennifer Lopez sing "Never You" in the video above, accompanied by new footage from the film.
Adapted from the John Kander-Fred Ebb 1992 musical of the same name, the movie musical has cut some songs from the musical and added some new ones. One of the new songs is "Never You," which was first heard in 1990 at SUNY, when the Spider Woman stage show was still in development. Lopez's rendition is the first time it's been professionally recorded. Kiss of the Spider Woman will be released in movie theatres October 10.
Film star and recording artist Lopez is starring in the title role, with Tonatiuh as Luis Molina and Diego Luna as Valentin Arregui. The cast also includes Broadway alum Josefina Scaglione (West Side Story), Bruno Bichir, and Aline Mayagoitia. Bill Condon (Dreamgirls, Beauty and the Beast) has written and directed the film.
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.
The 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. Kander, Ebb, and 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. Condon's screen adaptation is somewhat different from the musical's Broadway iteration, deleting several non-diagetic songs and restoring formerly deleted numbers from the musical's pre-Broadway try-out.
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, Spider Woman marks 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. One of Lopez's first feature films was 1997's Selena, which while not expressly a musical, featured the singer-songwriter lip-syncing as late Mexican pop 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.
Jennifer Lopez and Tonatiuh in Kiss of the Spider Woman
Tonatiuh and Diego Luna in Kiss of the Spider Woman
Jennifer Lopez and Tonatiuh in Kiss of the Spider Woman
Tonatiuh and Diego Luna in Kiss of the Spider Woman
