The remake of the 1992 romantic thriller The Bodyguard, which originally starred Whitney Houston and Kevin Costner, will feature a brand-new storyline about an overnight Latina sensation, according to the new film’s screenwriter.
Matthew López, the Tony Award-winning playwright of The Inheritance who will be writing the new film, told Variety in an interview published Tuesday (Sept. 28) that he wants a Latina to front the project. Unlike Houston, who portrayed Oscar-nominated actress and high-profile singer Rachel Marron dodging death threats and a stalker in the film, the new female lead of The Bodyguard will play an up-and-coming singer who realizes how much she needs protection after growing into her fame.
“It’s so much fun. When Warner Bros. approached me about the idea, I quickly said I would but I wanted the protagonist to be Latina. They agreed to that,” he said. “There’s been a lot of speculation about what I’d bring to the remake and some people were assuming that there’d be a gay storyline to it. Instead of focusing on an established star like the one Whitney Houston played, this is about a young Latina performer who has just become famous. It’s about how her life has changed because she is an overnight sensation. In the 21st century, that means she’s in immediate need of protection. It was important to me to use this opportunity to get Latin faces up on that screen and to get their stories told in a big way.”
