Jon M. Chu Circling Lin-Manuel Miranda's 'In The Heights'

Lin-Manuel Miranda recently predicted wouldn't get a Hamilton movie "for, like, 20 years," but his other signature work is coming to screens a lot sooner. Earlier this month we heard The Weinstein Co. had scooped up the movie rights to In the Heights, Miranda's Tony-winning musical. Now they may have found a director in Jon M. Chu, fresh off of Now You See Me 2. TheWrap reports Chu is in early talks to helm In the Heights. Miranda is producing the film with Scott Sanders and Mara Jacobs. Quiara Alegría Hudes, who wrote the book for the musical, has also penned the screenplay. Marc Klein submitted an earlier draft. No casting has been announced, and it's unclear whether Miranda will reprise his part from the stage show. The story follows a Dominican-American community in New York's Washington Heights, and Miranda originated the leading role of a bodega owner named Usnavi.

Miranda first began working on In the Heights in 1999, as a college student at Wesleyan University. The show reached Broadway in 2008 after first opening in Connecticut and Off-Broadway. In the Heights was nominated for 13 Tony Awards and won four including Best Musical and Best Original Score. It was also nominated for a Drama Pulitzer Prize, and won a Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Choreography. An In the Heights movie was previously in development at Universal around 2011, but never got off the ground. But with Miranda enjoying white-hot acclaim thanks to Hamilton, we're guessing this incarnation will have more momentum.

Chu's recent credits include Now You See Me 2, Jem and the Holograms, and G.I. Joe: Retaliation. He seems like a natural choice to direct a musical, having previously helmed two Step Up movies, two Justin Bieber documentaries, and the LXD webseries, about a group of dancers. And In the Heights is a more obvious move for him than Crazy Rich Asians, the romcom he recently signed up for — though I'm looking forward to that one, too.

It's probably small consolation for anyone still trying and failing to score Hamilton tickets, but Miranda will be all over the big screen in the near future. First we'll hear his tunes in Disney Animation's Moana, due out this fall, and then we'll see him onscreen with Emily Blunt in Mary Poppins Returns. It also wasn't too long ago that we heard his music in Star Wars: The Force Awakens.