Boyhood director Richard Linklater to adapt Merrily We Roll Along musical, will shoot film for over 20 years

After shooting his Oscar-nominated film Boyhood for over 12 years, filmmaker Richard Linklater is all set to adapt Stephen Sondheim’s musical Merrily We Roll Along for the big screen. The film will be shot over a span of 20 years, Linklater has confirmed in a statement obtained by Variety. [caption id=“attachment_7253741” align=“alignnone” width=“825”]  (From left-right) Beanie Feldstein, Ben Platt, Blake Jenner and Richard Linklater will spend over two decades to shoot Stephen Sondheim’s musical Merrily We Roll Along for Blumhouse. Images from Twitter[/caption] “I first saw, and fell in love with Merrily’ in the ‘80s, 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,” says Linklater, as per the publication. The film will feature Beanie Feldstein, Ben Platt, and Blake Jenner in the lead, and will be bankrolled by Ginger Sledge (Where’d You Go, Bernadette, Everybody Wants Some!!), Jason Blum via Blumhouse Productions (Whip Lash, Get Out), Jonathan Marc Sherman, and Linklater. Starring Patricia Arquette, Ellar Coltrane, Lorelei Linklater, and Ethan Hawke, Boyhood was filmed from 2001 to 2013. The film depicts the childhood and adolescence of Mason Evans Jr (Coltrane) from six to 18 as he grows up in Texas with divorced parents. The film went onto nab as many as six nominations at the Academy Awards, winning the Best Supporting Actress for Arquette’s performance as Evans’ mother. Merrily We Roll Along was written by George Furth, based on a 1934 play of the same name by George S Kaufman and Moss Hart. The plot of the music is centred on Franklin Shepard, who was once a talented composer of Broadway musicals but now has decided to abandon that life, and become a producer of Hollywood films, as per Deadline.