The Timeframe For The 'In the Heights' Movie Is Different Than The Original Musical

Korin Miller
·4 min read
Photo credit: Warner Brothers / Macall Polay
Photo credit: Warner Brothers / Macall Polay

The movie adaptation of Lin-Manuel Miranda's Broadway musical In the Heights got everyone up and dancing when it finally premiered in reopened movie theaters (!!) and on HBO Max. Whether you saw Usnavi, Nina, Vanessa, and all the rest light up a small or big screen, you got to join the exuberant party and dream right along with them.

The inspiring story focuses on the hopes and struggles of the Latinx community in the New York City neighborhood of Washington Heights. One iconic scene in the movie (and musical) centers around a blackout, where residents were continuously without power during the heat of the summer. Even then, these streets are made of lively music. Naturally, fans have all kinds of questions about the real-life events that inspired it.

So…was this blackout real and does it offer clues about the film's timeframe? Kind of. Here’s what you need to know about In the Heights' time period and real-life events.

The timeframe for the original Broadway hit In the Heights is vague.

Fans have debated the timeframe for In the Heights for years, but even the original script doesn't say an exact year. All it includes is "July 3rd through 5th."

Worth noting, Miranda penned the musical his senior year of college at Wesleyan University in 1999, and it debuted on Broadway in 2008.

A clear timeframe only came recently when Quiara Hudes, author of the book and co-screenwriter, shared the dates in a recent Vox interview. She says the Broadway musical was set in 2008 to 2009.

So, when does In the Heights the movie take place?

The big screen adaptation has a more specific, intentional timeframe, though. Hudes told Vox that the movie version is "contemporary." Meaning, it's all happening RN.

Why the time shift? Hudes says it was important to address modern issues that the Latinx community faces. "So, what is the community talking about right now? One of those answers was immigration and our undocumented family, friends, neighbors... The fever pitch, the way that immigration was being used as the sort of litmus test of Americanness, and even humanity—it felt like we had to address it,” she said. “And I was excited to address that more directly in the writing."

Hudes continued: "Another one was the national conversation that happened around microaggressions. That was new since In the Heights opened on the stage, at least at a national level. All of a sudden I had a new vocabulary for some of the experiences that Nina had been going through at college. It helped me articulate not just the financial stresses that her Stanford education put her family under, but also the cultural dislocation that she felt there, that was pretty profound."

"Those are some of the things that had happened in the intervening years," Hudes added. "I was like, let me dig into this. Let me sink my teeth in."

The actors were here for it, too. Director Jon Chu shared BTS clips to prove it:

So, was the blackout real?

Blackouts, or massive power outages, have actually happened on and off in New York City for years. One big summer blackout happened in August 14, 2003, when New York City and surrounding areas lost power for 29 hours, per amNewYork. Many people hung out outside for relief from the summer heat and some subway commuters had to walk home for miles because the subways were out of service.

There was another summer blackout in Queens in 2006 that left about 175,000 people without power for eight days, per the Baruch College Zicklin School of Business. This blackout is thought be the longest one in the history of NYC.

There wasn't, however, a blackout that happened in the Washington Heights neighborhood the summer of 2008 or 2009. It seems Lin Manuel took some creative liberties, but I'm not complaining.

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