Everyone's just hoping Earth's still here when Richard Linklater's Merrily We Roll Along wraps in 20 years
With today’s technology, digital aging has the potential to look pretty damn real, if at times somewhat uncanny. That’s not good enough, though, for Richard Linklater, who, still buzzing from the 12-years-in-the-making Boyhood, just signed on to direct a film adaptation of Stephen Sondheim’s Merrily We Roll Along that will film over a span of 20 years. This news was met with plenty of excitement, but also a touch of anxiety, what with our planet being more or less on the precipice of a climate catastrophe. Even Blumhouse, the co-producers on this project, cracked a joke about the audacious timeline on Twitter, writing, “The most ambitious thing about this tremendous project we are undertaking with Richard Linklater is that we boldly assume there will be a planet in 20 years.”
It’s all a bit meta for sure and Twitter is having a field day with it, since we’ll all probably be too busy drowning or choking on polluted air to watch it by 2039.
If all this talk of impending world doom is bumming you out, distract yourself with the realization that Merrily We Roll Along is also the play attached star Beanie Feldstein performs in Lady Bird. Neat!