{"id":614698,"date":"2026-09-28T21:38:09","date_gmt":"2026-09-28T21:38:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/614698\/"},"modified":"2026-09-28T21:38:09","modified_gmt":"2026-09-28T21:38:09","slug":"richard-linklater-gives-major-merrily-we-roll-along-update","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/614698\/","title":{"rendered":"Richard Linklater Gives Major ‘Merrily We Roll Along’ Update"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tUpon accepting his career achievement award at an intimate Zurich Film Festival<\/a> ceremony, beloved U.S. auteur Richard Linklater<\/a> was swiftly asked for an update on his musical film, Merrily We Roll Along<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n\tBased on Stephen Sondheim\u2019s 1981 show, Linklater\u2019s movie is set to shoot over a 20-year period, similar to his Oscar-nominated Boyhood, with stars Paul Mescal<\/a>, Ben Platt<\/a> and Beanie Feldstein<\/a> aging in real time.<\/p>\n

\n\tBefore a screening of his iconic Before Sunrise, Linklater sat for a 45-minute discussion with Zurich Film Festival CEO Christian Jungen to reflect on his entire career, from his early interest in cinema to making Dazed and Confused with Matthew McConaughey and later, School of Rock with Jack Black.<\/p>\n

\n\tToward the end of the conversation, an audience member asked for a status update on Merrily We Roll Along, to which the American filmmaker responded that it\u2019s proving a little trickier to be discreet compared to 2014\u2019s Boyhood (shot over 12 years). \u201cWhen I was doing Boyhood, we worked in complete anonymity. No one knew about the film. This one, on the other hand, because it\u2019s a Stephen Sondheim musical and it\u2019s very public, I have to answer this question for 20 years while we\u2019re making it,\u201d he laughed.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cBut my progress report,\u201d continued Linklater, \u201cis it\u2019s [shooting] nine sections in 20 years. And in a few months, we\u2019re filming the fourth section. So see you in 2040,\u201d he added, the room applauding.<\/p>\n

\n\tLinklater also dismissed concerns about \u201ctempting fate\u201d with such a long shoot. \u201cIt worked on Boyhood, [\u2026] and that\u2019s just the way the film should be made and that\u2019s the only way to tell the story. And people were like, \u2018Well, what if someone died?\u2019 There\u2019s always an extreme thing that would prevent it from being made. But I was like, \u2018Well, that usually doesn\u2019t happen,\u2019 and you gotta believe in collaborating with the future of some kind. So definitely got lucky [with Boyhood] and hoping to get lucky this time. But it\u2019s been so fun so far. It\u2019s very different. I have music already \u2014\u00a0it\u2019s a great score. We\u2019re adapting it step-by-step. I\u2019ve always made music films. \u2026 But it\u2019s fun to be making a full-on musical. But it\u2019s about friendship, long-term.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tMerrily We Roll Along is based on the 1934 play of the same name by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart, follows Franklin Shepard, a talented composer of Broadway musicals that abandons his friends and career to become a producer of Hollywood movies. The story begins at the height of his Hollywood fame and moves backwards in time, showing important moments in Frank\u2019s life.<\/p>\n

\n\tNaturally, Linklater was probed on how he came to cast Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy in the cult Before trilogy, and regaled the audience with anecdotes about making the Vienna-set romance. When Jungen cited an interview with Delpy where she said she\u2019d been \u201conly made a third\u201d of what Hawke was paid, Linklater responded: \u201cThat\u2019s not true. I actually remember fighting for it because I knew how hard the actors were going to have to work. And I did have some producers saying, \u2018Oh, Julie has no American credits. We don\u2019t have to pay her that much. We can get her for scale. \u2018 And I was like, \u2018Let\u2019s get them closer.\u2019 It was definitely the most she\u2019s ever made, but it was a little less than he did. But not [by] much.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tUpon receiving his career achievement award, Linklater, director of Hit Man, Nouvelle Vague and, more recently, Blue Moon, told the crowd: \u201cI feel so lucky to be in this world, to work with people in the film culture \u2014 not just filmmakers, but the film culture that we all live in too. Film festivals, curators, teachers of film, just film lovers everywhere, film societies,\u201d he said, alluding to his launching of the Austin Film Society in 1985.<\/p>\n

\n\tHe continued: \u201cI\u2019ve been so lucky all these years now to awaken every day in that world where it\u2019s optimistic, because film is optimistic. It\u2019s people who want the best, who want to see something great, who want to make something great, and we try to help each other in that. And it\u2019s the best people, too.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe evening was celebratory from the moment Linklater walked in to his picking up Zurich\u2019s Golden Eye Award. He joins 2026 honorees Julianne Moore<\/a>, John Turturro<\/a> and Naomi Watts<\/a>. The 22nd edition runs Sept. 24-Oct. 4.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Upon accepting his career achievement award at an intimate Zurich Film Festival ceremony, beloved U.S. auteur Richard Linklater…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":614699,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[226372,302868,430,156,1019,302869,111,139,69,467,14403,301660,40857],"class_list":["post-614698","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-beanie-feldstein","tag-ben-platt","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-international","tag-merrily-we-roll-along","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-paul-mescal","tag-richard-linklater","tag-zurich-2026","tag-zurich-film-festival"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/614698","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=614698"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/614698\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/614699"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=614698"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=614698"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=614698"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}