When Argentinian/Brazilian film director Héctor Babenco directed The Kiss Of Spider Woman in 1985, it was the first independent movie to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Film.  The movie starred  William Hurt who gave a stunning lifetime best performance that won him 8 Best Actor Awards including his first and only Oscar.

The journey started back in 1975 when  Manuel Puig. first published the novel with the same name 1976 novel  and Puig adapted the novel into a stage play in 1983,  The film  followed in 1985, then a Broadway musical in 1996 by the multiple Tony Award®-winning playwright Terrence McNally (Master Class, Ragtime) and composer/lyricist team John Kander and Fred Ebb.  In there was a  2020 television special episode of Katy Keene. Now there is a film adaptation of the Broadway musical, which premiered at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival, and is about to be released in movie theaters this Fall.

This new film from Academy Award Winner Bill Condon (Dreamgirls, Gods and Monsters, Chicago) tells the story of Valentín (Diego Luna), a political prisoner, who shares a cell with Molina (Tonatiuh), a window dresser convicted of public indecency. The two form an unlikely bond as Molina recounts the plot of a Hollywood musical starring his favorite silver screen diva, Ingrid Luna (played.by the late great Chita Riviera on Broadway winning anither Tony) The role is now  played by Jennifer Lopez  who has long been an ally, but this project is something more personal she sia  ‘It’s a tribute — to queer history, to the icons who came before, and to the little girl who once sat in front of ‘West Side Story,’ imagining what might be possible.

Conndon has played tribute to all those who created the oriignal and have since passed : William Hurt, Fred Ebb, Terrence McNally as well as Miss Rivera