Beanie Feldstein And Ben Platt Are Filming A Musical That Won't Be Done For 20 Years

Beanie Feldstein (Booksmart) and Ben Platt (The Politician) are gearing up for one of the most ambitious roles of their careers.


Collider reports that the pair are teaming up with filmmaker Richard Linklater for another lengthy film project. Soon after working on the 2014 film Boyhood for over 12 years and winning six Oscars for his time, Linklater is back again with an even bigger project: Merrily We Roll Along. Nevertheless this time, it's set to take place over the course of 20 years.


The movie could be based on Stephen Sondheim's musical, which is based on the 1934 play of the same name from George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart. Sources close to the project tell Collider that the 20-year range could be crucial to the film, and Linklater could be looking to follow it.


The story follows Broadway composer named Franklin Shepard who leaves New York beyond to be a movie producer in Los Angeles. The sprawling timeline would explore his life from his massive popularity during Hollywood and all of the essential parts of his career that shaped it. Platt would play the lead role of Shepard, while Feldstein would take on the role of theater critic and friend to Shepard, Mary Flynn.


needless to say, shooting a movie over the course of 20 years might be a challenging prospect, nevertheless it did work out quite well with Boyhood. Given that Feldstein and Platt are both young now, they'd be filming scenes that would actually be going at the end of the movie rather than the starting, saving their starting movie scenes for two decades down the road.


It's definitely a large undertaking, although if we're all still here 20 years down the road, hopefully we can visualize it all come to fruition. It's not daily things like this come with each other, so it could a true feat to be able to see Linklater pull it off.