EXCLUSIVE: As his acclaimed comedic thriller Hit Man approaches its June 7 launch on Netflix, filmmaker Richard Linklater might have recognized his subsequent mission, as sources inform Deadline that he’s in growth on a movie known as Blue Moon.
Taking its identify from the 1934 ballad written by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart, the movie follows Hart as he makes an attempt to avoid wasting face whereas celebrating his former accomplice Rodgers’ nice success on the night time of his musical Oklahoma!‘s Broadway opening. Whereas it’s believed that this can find yourself being Linklater’s subsequent movie, that’s not fully clear at current.
We’re informed that Robert Kaplow — co-writer of Linklater’s 2008 movie Me and Orson Welles — penned the script for Blue Moon and that Linklater will produce the mission alongside his supervisor John Sloss.
A legendary American songwriting duo identified for his or her contributions to musical theater, Rodgers and Hart collaborated between 1919 and the early Forties, with Rodgers serving as composer and Hart as lyricist. Throughout their time collectively, they created 28 stage musicals together with A Connecticut Yankee, Babes in Arms and Pal Joey and penned greater than 500 songs.
The Rodgers and Hart partnership ended primarily resulting from Hart’s rising struggles with alcoholism and psychological well being points, which made it difficult for him to work constantly. In 1943, Rodgers started a brand new collaboration with Oscar Hammerstein II to work on Oklahoma!, which was deemed revolutionary for its seamless integration of music, lyrics, and dance into the storytelling, setting a brand new commonplace for musical theater. The success of the present established Rodgers and Hammerstein as one of the crucial profitable duos in musical theater historical past, resulting in such different iconic works as Carousel, South Pacific, The King and I and The Sound of Music.
Upon its premiere eventually 12 months’s Venice Movie Competition, Linklater’s newest effort Hit Man, starring Glen Powell and Adria Arjona, drew a six-minute standing ovation. Loosely based mostly on a 2001 Texas Month-to-month true-crime article, the movie facilities on Gary Johnson (Powell), a professor moonlighting as a success man of kinds for his metropolis police division who descends into harmful, doubtful territory when he finds himself interested in a girl (Arjona) who enlists his providers. The excitement across the movie is robust, as a breakout mission for Powell, even when Linklater’s solid wasn’t capable of put it up for sale final fall amid the actors strike. Netflix swooped in to amass the movie out of TIFF for $20 million, in one of many huge offers of the competition.
Linklater is a five-time Oscar nominee, together with three for 2014’s Boyhood — which was shot over 11 years — and writing noms for Earlier than Sundown and Earlier than Midnight. His movies additionally embrace Dazed and Confused, SubUrbia, Faculty of Rock, Bernie, All people Needs Some!! and The place’d You Go Bernadette? He lately directed on and exec produced Max’s docuseries God Save Texas, which premiered at Sundance in January. Previous to that, he wrote, directed and produced the animated movie Apollo 10 1⁄2: A House Age Childhood, which premiered at SXSW.
Presently, he’s within the midst of one other long-term mission, à la Boyhood, with Merrily We Roll Alongside, a function adaptation of the Stephen Sondheim musical, starring Paul Mescal, Ben Platt and Beanie Feldstein, which is capturing intermittently over the course of 20 years.
Linklater is repped by CAA, Cinetic Media, and Sloss Eckhouse Dasti Haynes LawCo.