Richard Linklater Confirms 'Merrily' Movie with 20-Year Shoot

Acclaimed director Richard Linklater has confirmed that he is directing a movie version of the Broadway musical Merrily We Roll Along, which will be filmed across a 20-year time span.

Ben Platt and Beanie Feldstein were already announced to star in the movie and now Glee‘s Blake Jenner has also joined the cast!

Blake previously worked with Richard on the movie Everybody Wants Some.

Blake is starring in the movie musical as Broadway composer Franklin Shepard while Beanie is playing his friend, theater critic Mary Flynn. Ben is playing the third lead role of playwright Charley Kringas, Frank’s former best friend and writing partner.

“I first saw, and fell in love with Merrily in the ‘80’s and I can’t think of a better place to spend the next 20 years than in the world of a Sondheim musical. I don’t enter this multi-year experience lightly, but it seems the best, perhaps the only way, to do this story justice on film,” Linklater said in a statement to THR.

The musical is told in reverse, starting in 1976 and finally reaching the point where the characters originally met, 20 years earlier. The first segment of the movie has already been filmed!