How do you say ''Nobody puts Baby in a corner!'' in Spanish? We're all about to find out, since, according the Hollywood Reporter, producers now have a lead actor and a release date for the next ''Dirty Dancing'' movie, which is set in Cuba on the eve of the 1959 revolution.
The prequel, called ''Havana Nights,'' will star Diego Luna, the 22-year-old Mexican actor who, along with Gael Garcia Bernal, starred in this year's hit ''Y Tu Mama Tambien.'' In ''Havana,'' he'll play a Cuban dancer who falls in love with a 17-year-old American girl who's family has just moved to Cuba. The movie, which already has a release date of Nov. 21, 2003, is expected to shoot early next year, once a female lead is cast. (Early reports had Natalie Portman and Ricky Martin shaking their bon-bons as the leads, but that was two years ago.) Directing the Artisan-Miramax co-production will be Guy Ferland, who shot this past weekend's TV movie ''Bang Bang You're Dead.''
Luna, who played a sexually fumbling teen in ''Y Tu Mama,'' might not be the most obvious choice to play a suave dancer who sweeps a girl off her feet. Still, Entertainment Weekly placed the actor (who also costars in the upcoming Salma Hayek movie ''Frida'' and in the recently shot Western ''Open Range'' with Kevin Costner and Robert Duvall) on this summer's It List, along with ''Y Tu Mama'' costar Bernal. (EW named them ''It Dynamic Duo.'') Luna told EW he hoped to have a career like that of recent Oscar nominee Javier Bardem (''Before Night Falls''), calling him ''a great example of an actor working in the whole world... doing just what he wants to do.'' Well, considering that Luna will now star in a drama set in revolutionary Cuba, he's already following in Bardem's footsteps.
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