Richard Linklater Responds to MERRILY WE ROLL ALONG Release Date Concerns

Director Richard Linklater has responded to fans who are concerned about not living to see his Merrily We Roll Along film adaptation.

The movie, based on the popular Sondheim musical, will be shot every couple of years over the course of 20 years. The final number, "Our Time," which is the only sequence that has been filmed so far, recently had to be re-shot due to the addition of Paul Mescal to the cast. He joins Ben Platt and Beanie Feldstein.

Linklater, who is currently 62, will be in his early eighties when the film comes out. It is estimated that it will be released in the early 2040s. While speaking with IndieWire, the director shared a message to fans who are worried about the release date.

"What I do feel is when older people, pushing 80 perhaps, come up and say, 'Oh, I hope I'm around when it comes out,'" the director stated. "Someone on that age scale, you might look ... I can see how the actuarial tables say you may or may not be around to experience the final movie. But frankly, I'm on that same table, so I tell them, 'Don't count yourself out.' We're all getting there."

Linklater also discussed how the film's process compares to his recent film Boyhood, which similarly filmed once a year from 2002 to 2013.

"They're very different, just using the same longitudinal storytelling technique. They're just such different stories. But also, Boyhood was every year like a time-lapse, but Merrily is like nine times shooting in 20 years, so there's a two-year gap between each time shoot. Sometimes, two years in a row, but the schedule is all over the map."

Ben Platt, who plays Charley Kringas, recently revealed that the second sequence will be filmed later this year. Beanie Feldstein stars as Mary Flynn and Mescal is slated to play Franklin Shepard.

Merrily We Roll Along is the musical adaptation of George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart's play of the same name. The show centers around a trio of friends: Franklin Shepard, Charley Kringas, and Mary Flynn. The show begins in 1976 with Frank, who, having once been a talented composer of Broadway musicals, has now abandoned his friends and his songwriting career to become a producer of Hollywood movies.

The show's narrative then shows the events of the trio's lives in reverse chronological order, ending in 1957. The musical has a score by Stephen Sondheim and a book by George Furth, and the original production was directed by Harold Prince.