Richard Linklater’s latest, and most ambitious, cinematic experiment is an adaptation of Stephen Sondheim’s “Merrily We Roll Along,” famously told in reverse chronological order. Linklater’s plan is to film it across 20 years, in what may ultimately become the most ambitious movie musical ever made.
So, we’re now in year six, the project, being shot intermittently, started production in 2019, allowing the actors to age naturally in real time. This same approach earned Linklater acclaim with “Boyhood” in 2014, which charted a boy’s life across 12 years. With ‘Merrily,’ the scope is even broader than that one.
All this to say, multiple sources are telling me that Lin-Manuel Miranda has joined the cast. In 2012, Miranda starred as Charley Kringas in the acclaimed concert production of the show, but he won’t be playing that character in Linklater’s film. It remains unclear whom he has been assigned to portray.
Miranda joins a cast that already included Paul Mescal, Ben Platt, Beanie Feldstein, Mallory Bechtel and Hannah Cruz. I expect more casting to take place in the coming years, there are lots of characters in Sondheim’s musical.
In a 2024 interview with Decider, Linklater confirmed that the film is “technically a third of the way through” and explained that production is continuing every few years, according to a shooting schedule that mirrors the natural passage of time. “The actors evolve with the characters,” Linklater said. “It’s about capturing life as it happens.”
The film follows Franklin Shepard, a once-promising composer who abandons his friends and ideals to pursue success in Hollywood. The story unfolds in reverse, beginning with the disillusioned present and moving backward through time to reveal the characters’ youthful ambitions and the friendships they once cherished.
The final film likely won’t see release until at least 2040, a timeline that would seem absurd, but for Linklater, who will be in his 70s by then, it more or less checks out in terms of his lifelong obsession with the passage of time, most notably depicted in films such as “Boyhood,” and the ‘Before’ trilogy.
I look forward to the film’s 2040 release, probably slotted in the summer, somewhere between the 57th MCU movie and ‘Fast & Furious in Space.’