Jennifer Lopez, Bill Condon & More Talk KISS OF THE SPIDER WOMAN at Sundance World Premiere

BroadwayWorld was on hand at the Sundance world premiere of KISS OF THE SPIDER WOMAN on January 26, 2025 and spoke with the creative team and performers on the carpet. Filled with breathtaking intimate moments, and stunningly edited and designed with meaningful visuals, it is a love letter to the classic movie musical that transcends the genre with moving messages about how we can allow ourselves to evolve through acceptance.

Starring Jennifer Lopez, Diego Luna, and Tonatiuh, the film is based on the 1993 Broadway musical (music by John Kander, lyrics by Fred Ebb, and book by Terrence McNally) with Chita Rivera that won seven Tony Awards, including best musical, book, and score. The adaptation was written and directed by Oscar-winning Bill Condon, writer of CHICAGO and THE GREATEST SHOWMAN, director of Disney’s live action BEAUTY AND THE BEAST, and director/writer of DREAMGIRLS.

“I've been waiting for this moment my whole life,” Lopez said in the post-screening Q&A after the audience had witnessed her astonishing performance, in which she flawlessly embodies the musical screen actresses of yesteryear with grace, pathos, impeccable dancing, and exquisite vocals. “The truth is, when you talk about the importance of musicals, the reason that I even wanted to be in this business was because my mom would sit me in front of the TV - it would come on once a year, WEST SIDE STORY on Thanksgiving, I remember, and I was just mesmerized, and I was like, that's what I want to do, that's what I want to do, and that was always my goal. And this is the first time that I actually got to do it.”

Through tear-filled eyes, she embraced Condon, “This man made my dream come true! You know, I think of Chita Rivera, I think of Fred Ebb, and I think of Terrence McNally and all of the love that they poured into this. And it's just an honor to be able to be part of this movie.”

“I'm so happy that Bill and Terrence had a conversation about making this movie before he passed,” producer Tom Kirdahy said to BroadwayWorld about his late husband, McNally. “Terrence really loved Bill as an artist and wanted him to take telling this story further and allow it to be the love story it always wanted to be. So I know that he is beaming right now.”

In KISS OF THE SPIDER WOMAN, two very different men share a jail cell during civil unrest in early 1980s Argentina. Molina is a window dresser arrested for homosexual activity who is worried about his ailing mother, and Valentin is a revolutionary refusing to divulge his secrets to the guards. To pass the time, Molina describes in detail his favorite movie, a 1950s-era Hollywood musical called KISS OF THE SPIDER WOMAN. At first, Valentin is skeptical, but over time he warms to the story as the two men learn to appreciate and care for one other.

Music producer Matt Sullivan, who has worked on a majority of the movie musicals that have been released this century, told BroadwayWorld, “Bill wrote a beautiful screenplay that is really reverent to the Broadway show and follows the story beats. The main big songs, ‘Where You Are,’ ‘Gimme Love,’ they're there. And then we have three songs that were resurrected—the show originally went to SUNY Purchase, and there were three songs that were in that version that we actually resurrected and put into the movie. So it's the original plus.”

The day before the premiere, BroadwayWorld was present at an intimate conversation at Sundance between Condon and film critic Elvis Mitchell at The Elvis Suite, presented by Darling&Co., where he explained his concept for the film. “It's a big movie musical in one third of its being, and then in two thirds, it is a very, very seat of the pants, two-hander prison drama,” he said. “It's this slow movement of the two movies toward each other, and then they kind of merge in a way.”

“What Bill has done with this adaptation is to really separate the world of the prison from the world of the fantasy, which I think is really smart for a movie musical,” Aline Mayagoitia, a luminous actress in the film, told BroadwayWorld. “In the Chita Rivera version that we’re all familiar with, it’s these numbers that happen on stage, and to have here the separation of being lifted out of it, I think you get more of the gruesome darkness of what the prison environment is, and then the Technicolor.”

It’s a film that is so unique in its structure and craft, that it really must be experienced to be fully appreciated. At the beginning, musical numbers are relegated solely to the movie-within-a-movie that Molina is describing to Valentin. The stark contrast between the two worlds invokes a real sense of peril and a desperate desire for the characters to escape to a place filled with music and color outside of their own. As time goes on, the two movies bleed through one another in a brilliant blend of the unique strengths of the mediums of musicals and dramatic films.

Although this concept required some songs from the Broadway score to be left out of the adaptation, writer/director Bill Condon stands by the decision. “Take a look at CABARET, the movie,” he told BroadwayWorld on the carpet. “CABARET, the show is one of the greatest shows ever written. It has never gone away. CABARET, the movie is, to my mind, the greatest movie musical ever made. It is a radical reinterpretation of that show. These things are two different meanings, you know? And yes, we all love—I love every single song in that show. But for people to start complaining about losing “Dressing Them Up” and we're in a world where people are used to musicals, why can't they sing in a prison cell? That's not the movie I wanted to make. I didn't want to have singing prisoners singing over the wall. You know, that's another movie. But I wish they would wait until they saw the movie to pass judgment.”

“The intimacy of it is so heartbreaking in such a different way,” continued Mayagoitia, who played Katherine Howard in SIX on tour and will make her Broadway debut in REAL WOMEN HAVE CURVES. “And I think because this is a musical about the power of cinema to heal you and to take you out of darkness, it’s just like the perfect marriage of the two worlds for me.”

“It's a musical that was a stage musical, but it's about cinema,” producer Greg Yolen (Condon’s BEAUTY AND THE BEAST) told BroadwayWorld. “And so the translation to film is so natural, and I think it really demands to be in this form. And I think Bill knows what he's doing when it comes to telling movie musical stories.”

“There’s no one better than Bill,” added Kirdahy, who is the Tony and Olivier-winning producer of HADESTOWN, ANASTASIA, and this season’s GYPSY, to name a few. “Bill talks about it being two films—a play about two men in a prison and a musical that allows them to survive. I think for audiences, we all know the power of storytelling. And honestly, I think a lot of people who see this movie are going to find the kind of escape that they need to help them feel more alive and more belonging in the world. And there are times when words don't capture what music can, and so the explosions of music in this movie allow relief for the audience and for these two men who are navigating their relationship.”

“The music of Kander and Ebb is timeless,” Tonatiuh, who plays Molina in a ravishing career-making performance wonderfully complemented by Luna’s layered Valentin, said to BroadwayWorld. “It completely engulfs you and takes you away because it's just beautiful. So the juxtaposition of the tragedy with this amount of beauty balances it out, because otherwise we would drown in the sadness.”

Based on the 1976 novel by Manuel Puig, KISS OF THE SPIDER WOMAN was previously adapted to a non-musical film in 1985. Josefina Scaglione, who makes a tender impact with her musical moment in the film, is proud to be his fellow Argentinian. “If you watch the original movie, it's beautiful,” Scaglione, who received a Tony nomination for playing Maria in the 2009 Broadway revival of WEST SIDE STORY, told BroadwayWorld. “But I think that adding the music and adding that other amazing world just makes it bigger and lovelier and deeper, I guess, because music touches other strings in the soul.”

“All the things that movies can do can happen in the musical,” Condon said in the Q&A. “You know, it's music, it's imagery, it is design, it's drama, and everything gets lifted by that sense of performance.”

When BroadwayWorld asked the movie’s producers how this film compared to their experience making other movie musicals, Barry Josephson said, “ENCHANTED and DISENCHANTED were studio movies, and I loved them, and I think they were great. This was an opportunity to see an auteur make a film, start to finish, from development, to writing, to execution. So this was Bill’s movie, and it was great to support an auteur in their work.”

“On a film like BEAUTY (or ENCHANTED or DISENCHANTED, I imagine), you have a big musical number, you shoot it, you go away, you do some book scenes, you prepare for the next one,” Yolen said. “And here, because we shot everything with Jennifer in three weeks, in total 17 days, everything you see in this film with Jennifer, she achieved doing a musical number every single day, back to back. And as Bill said in a beautiful toast on her last day, I don't think there's anyone else in the world who could have shown up and hit the marks and made the days other than Jennifer. So what we were able to achieve as an indie film, creating a musical with this much singing and dancing and performing in that amount of time, it was a lot of pressure, it was really hard, and she was the secret weapon—maybe not so secret.”

“Everything you love about her as an actress is just given to you in consecrated form when she sings a song,” Condon said at The Elvis Suite. “It's one thing to do these dance numbers. She's spectacular, but it's been a while since we had someone in a closeup, sing a love song, a ballad, and—I don't know anybody else who could hold the screen for a minute and a half the way she does.”

“I was really happy that Jennifer was so collaborative and really welcomed me, John Kander, and the music team into her world, and it was really her world,” Sullivan told BroadwayWorld. “When people say, I've never seen Jennifer like that before, I think that's going to be a really proud moment—her having a whole new side to her that we see.”

Lopez’s performance feels completely at home in a classic Technicolor studio film, as do those around her. Every aspect of the production design, cinematography, and choreography fully embrace the aesthetic in such a way that the scenes of dialogue can be just as thrilling as the electrifying musical numbers, which received applause from the Sundance audience throughout the premiere screening. 

“Because of the aspect of kind of doing that 50s musical, which was so important to build, to do authentically in a way, like with those long shots, and doing the dance numbers from top to bottom without cutting sometimes, I was like, how many more times?” Lopez said in the Q&A, feigning exhaustion with a smile. “Yeah, actually, no, I would be like, can I do it one more time?”

“But that part of it is a fantasy,” she continued. "It's the escapism. And I think the thing about the movie that I love the most is that it tells of the importance of storytelling and how it can help you get through the day, and how it helps all of us. Films help all of us kind of get through the hardest times in our lives, just like music. That's why musicals, movies are so important. And the importance of love, the importance of love and just seeing each other as human beings and how love can kind of, you know, shorten the gap of any divide between people. You just look at each other as individuals, as people, as human beings, and not worry about who you like, who you don't like, what your political beliefs are. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. There's another human on the other side of you, and you will find something in common with them. And it's that you are both human, and you both have a heart. And that, to me, is something that was so important when I read the movie and why I wanted to be part of it.”

“For me, it's the movie I've been sort of building toward my whole life,” Condon said to BroadwayWorld. “I feel like I put everything that I care about in the world, in politics, in movies, in musicals, into this, you know? So I've been proud of the fact that it has movement, and I hope it continues to.”

Photo Credit: Tonatiuh and Diego Luna appear in KISS OF THE SPIDER WOMAN by Bill Condon, an official selection of the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. Courtesy of Sundance Institute.