Richard Linklater Gives ‘Merrily We Roll Along’ Filming and Release Update: “See You in 2040”

Richard Linklater’s latest—and most ambitious—cinematic experiment is an adaptation of Stephen Sondheim’s “Merrily We Roll Along,” famously told in reverse chronological order. Linklater plans to film it across 20 years, in what will likely become the most ambitious movie musical ever made.

We’re now in year eight. The project, shot intermittently, began production in 2019, allowing the actors to age naturally in real time. This same approach earned Linklater acclaim for “Boyhood” in 2014, which charted a boy’s life across 12 years. With “Merrily,” the scope is even broader.

We now have our yearly update from Linklater, who is being honored at the Zurich Film Festival, and things seem to be going—knock on wood—quite smoothly. The film is set to resume shooting in a few months:

When I was doing Boyhood, we worked in complete anonymity. No one knew about the film. This one, on the other hand, because it’s a Stephen Sondheim musical and it’s very public, I have to answer this question for 20 years while we’re making it. But my progress report is it’s [shooting] nine sections in 20 years. And in a few months, we’re filming the fourth section. So see you in 2040.

We’re not tempting fate with such a long shoot. It worked on Boyhood, […] and that’s just the way the film should be made and that’s the only way to tell the story. And people were like, ‘Well, what if someone died?’ There’s always an extreme thing that would prevent it from being made. But I was like, ‘Well, that usually doesn’t happen,’ 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’s been so fun so far. It’s very different. I have music already — it’s a great score. We’re adapting it step-by-step. I’ve always made music films. … But it’s fun to be making a full-on musical. But it’s about friendship, long-term.

Honestly, if this 20-year production actually reaches completion, it’ll be nothing short of miraculous. Life is unpredictable, and you never know what might happen over two decades. The production has already had to replace its original lead, Blake Jenner, following abuse allegations, and it’s hard to imagine the next 13 years going completely smoothly. For Linklater’s sake, hopefully any future challenges are minor enough not to derail the whole project.

The movie follows three friends throughout their lives and careers. The cast is led by Paul Mescal, Ben Platt, and Beanie Feldstein, with Mallory Bechtel and Hannah Cruz also starring. I recently reported that Lin-Manuel Miranda also shot some scenes last year in Austin.

At its center is Franklin Shepard, a once-promising composer who abandons his friends and ideals to pursue success in Hollywood. The story unfolds in reverse, beginning in 1976 and moving backward to 1957 to reveal the characters’ youthful ambitions and the friendships they once cherished.

The final film likely won’t be released until at least 2040—a timeline that might seem absurd, but for Linklater, who will be around 80 by then, it makes perfect sense given his lifelong fascination with the passage of time, most notably depicted in films such as “Boyhood” and the “Before” trilogy.

I look forward to the film’s 2040 release, probably slotted into the summer—somewhere between the 70th MCU movie, “Avatar,” and “Fast & Furious in Space.”