RIchard Linklater’s Next Film Will Take Twenty Years To Complete

According to our friends over at Collider, Richard Linklater has roped Pitch Perfect's Ben Platt and Booksmart's Beanie Feldstein into a crazily ambitious new project: a film which will take twenty years to complete. Babies being born right now will probably be juuuust old enough to drink when it arrives.

The film's an adaptation of the Stephen Sondheim musical Merrily We Roll Along, which Collider describes thusly: 

"Merrily We Roll Along follows Franklin Shepard, a talented Broadway composer who abandons his theater career in New York and all his friends in order to produce movies in Los Angeles. Like the play, the musical begins at the height of his Hollywood fame and moves backwards in time, showing snapshots of the most important moments in Frank’s life that shaped the man he is today. Platt will play the lead, while Feldstein will play his best friend, theater critic Mary Flynn."

Apparently the plan calls for shooting the film in reverse chronological order, to match the musical's format and accommodate the aging of its stars. This is a slightly more complicated version of the 12-year odyssey Linklater undertook with the production of Boyhood, which ended up racking up half a dozen Oscar nominations following its release in 2014. It's certainly an ambitious idea, and assuming the world doesn't go up in flames between now and 2040, it'll probably be quite the spectacle once it's finished. Good luck, Richard!

Nothing further to report at this time, but please stay tuned for further updates on Merrily We Roll Along for the next two decades.