Richard Linklater Gears Up for 20-Year Film Project, ‘Merrily We Roll Along’

After coming off of a whopping 12-year production time for 2014’s Boyhood, Richard Linklater is pushing through boundaries yet again. The director is set to shoot a movie adaptation of composer Stephen Sondheim and writer George Furth’s Merrily We Roll Along for a period of 20 years. Collider first reported on the news.

Merrily We Roll Along is a story of Broadway composer Franklin Shepard who turns his back on his stage life to pursue filmmaking in Los Angeles. The original play is performed in reverse chronological order, with it opening at the height of Franklin’s fledgling Hollywood career and going back in time to show how he got there.

Collider reports that Linklater will honor the musical’s timeline and will shoot the movie in the same order as it ends with the characters in their early 20s about to set off to their respective careers.

Linklater is optimistic with the project, citing the 20-year production as the proper approach to pay homage to the original 1934 play written by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart. “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,” Linklater said in a statement to Variety. “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.”

Merrily We Roll Along will star Ben Platt, Beanie Feldstein, and Blake Jenner. Ginger Sledge, Jason Blum, Jonathan Marc Sherman, and Linklater will produce the 20-year epic.

Boyhood earned Linklater an Academy Award nomination and starred Ethan Hawke, Patricia Arquette, and Ellar Coltrane. The movie followed Coltrane from his early childhood until young adulthood, exploring the different struggles he faced in every stage. Production for the movie began in 2001 and wrapped in 2013. Boyhood‘s exceptional storytelling also earned Linklater critical acclaim in various international film festivals.