HBO Max and Warner Bros. released the first trailer for the new remake of Father of the Bride, which comes 30 years after the previous Hollywood take on the classic story. In this new version, Andy Garcia plays the father reluctant to see his daughter get married. Gloria Estefan stars as his wife, while Morbius star Adria Arjona plays their daughter. Father of the Bride hits HBO Max on June 16.
In the new version, Garcia stars as Miami architect Billy, whose marriage is on the rocks. “It’s sliding downhill and is on a slippery slope, not because they don’t love each other,” Garcia told Entertainment Weekly. “We’ve kind of grown into different spaces, and we take our marriage for granted at this point.”
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Estefan said her character, Ingrid, is considering divorce. “She’s trying to push him to wake up because a year of therapy certainly hadn’t woken him up. But that decision is a tough one for a Latina to make,” the singer said.
The parents’ rocky marriage is just one of the many changes writer Matt Lopez and director Gaz Alazraki brought to the story. While the 1950 film centered on a white East Coast family and the 1991 version focused on a white California family, the 2022 version centers on a Cuban American family in Miami. Sophie (Arjona) is also marrying into a wealthy Mexican American family by tying the knot with Diego Boneta’s Adan. Isabela Merced (Dora and the Lost City of Gold) plays Sophie’s younger sister Sofia. Chloe Fineman also plays the scene-stealing wedding planner, the part previously played by Martin Short in the 1991 movie.
“There was both an honor and an obligation to deliver a story that’s within the Latin cultures, in this case, the Cuban and the Mexican, trying to relate to one another,” Garcia told Entertainment Weekly. “There’s an obligation to do it right, represent it without stereotypes, in a way that, although it’s culturally specific, its themes are universal.”
It was easy for Garcia to act alongside Estefan, whom he worked with on For Love or Country (2000). “It was a tremendous joy for me and she’s a woman that I admire tremendously,” he said. “We’re family. It was easy to step into that dynamic.”
Father of the Bride started life as a novel by Edward Streeter in 1949. The following year, MGM released the first film version, featuring Spencer Tracy and Joan Bennett as the parents and Elizabeth Taylor as the titular bride. The Best Picture Oscar-nominated comedy was such a hit that it was followed by the sequel, Father’s Little Dividend. The 1991 Father of the Bride featured Steve Martin and Diane Keaton as the parents and Kimberly Williams as their daughter. The 1995 sequel took its story from Father’s Little Dividend.
Disney’s Touchstone Pictures released the Martin-Keaton movies, which were available on Disney+ for a period of time. In 2018, The Hollywood Reporter reported that Disney planned to make their own Father of the Bride remake, but it is unclear if Disney is still working on that.
