ICYMI: Beanie Feldstein Teaming Up With Richard Linklater For a Film 20 Years In The Making!

Richard Linklater has confirmed that he will be starting a 20-year-long filming experience, as he directs an adaptation of the Stephen Sondheim musicalMerrily We Roll Along. Though Linklater has a lot of well-known films, like the Before Trilogy starring Ethan Hawke and Julie Delphy, his most recent landmark film was Boyhood, which he filmed over the course of 12 years. It stars Ethan Hawke and Patricia Arquette and tracks the story of a young boy (Ellar Coltrane) as he grows up through the years. 

Now it seems like Linklater wants to beat his own record and make a project filmed over 2 decades. I don’t know what I’m going to be doing next week, much less in 10 or 20 years! To make this even better, Linklater got a few of the best actors around right now, both on screen and on stage, to lead the cast and commit to work with him for the foreseeable future. 

Beanie Feldstein, who is known for playing the best friend in Lady Bird and most recently starring alongside Kaitlyn Dever in the heartfelt teen comedy Booksmart, has just signed on. Ben Platt, who originated the title role in the Broadway musical Dear Evan Hansen and won a Tony for his performance, will be starring alongside her. The third actor to round out the main cast is Blake Jenner, who has most recently been in What/If but has worked with Linklater before on Everybody Wants Some!!.

All 3 actors also have or will be collaborating with Ryan Murphy! Ben Platt is starring in Murphy’s first project with Netflix, “The Politician”, while Beanie Feldstein has been cast as Monica Lewinsky in Season 3 of “American Crime Story”, entitled "Impeachment". Blake Jenner isn’t working with Murphy currently, but he got his start on “Glee”!

Merrily We Roll Along is about a rich and successful film producer and composer named Franklin Shepard (Jenner), his friend and lyricist Charles Kringas (Platt), and theatre critic Mary Flynn. The story begins with the three as bitter acquaintances, slowly rewinding through the past 20 years to show how they became that way, back to the start of their friendship. 

With a team like this, it’s bound to be a good film, but anything can happen in 20 years, so it'll be nothing short of a miracle if Linklater can actually pull this off. I guess we'll just have to wait (and wait... and wait...) and see!