George Clooney to Make Broadway Debut as Edward R. Murrow in Good Night, and Good Luck

Good Night, and Good Luck, a stage adaptation of the 2005 film of the same name, will premiere on Broadway in spring 2025 at a Shubert Theatre to be announced. The play is written by George Clooney and Grant Heslov who also co-wrote the screenplay, and will be directed by Tony winner David Cromer (The Band's Visit). Clooney will also lead the production in his Broadway debut as Edward R. Murrow. 

A historical drama about 1950s American television news, Good Night, and Good Luck depicts the conflict between broadcast journalist Edward R. Murrow and Senator Joseph McCarthy, particularly related the senator's corrupt anti-communist actions. Clooney directed the film and played Murrow's co-producer Fred W. Friendly opposite David Strathairn as Murrow, Robert Downey Jr. (who will also make his Broadway debut this season) as Joseph Wershba, Patricia Clarkson as Shirley Wershba, Frank Langella as William Paley and Jeff Daniels as Sig Mickelson. The film earned six Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actor (Strathairn).

"Edward R. Murrow operated from a kind of moral clarity that feels vanishingly rare in today’s media landscape," said Cromer in a statement. "There was an immediacy in those early live television broadcasts that today can only be effectively captured on stage, in front of a live audience.”

Clooney added, “I am honored, after all these years, to be coming back to the stage and especially, to Broadway, the art form and the venue that every actor aspires to."

Clooney is a four-time Golden Globe Award winner, a two-time Academy Award winner and a 2022 Kennedy Center Honoree. He gained notoriety in the 1990s as Dr. Doug Ross on the NBC medical drama ER and went on to star in a long list of films including From Dusk Till Dawn, Out of Sight, The Perfect Storm, O Brother, Where Art Thou? and the Ocean's film series, among others. He made his directorial debut with the spy drama Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, going on to helm The Ides of March, The Monuments Men, The Midnight Sky, and most recently, the 2023 film The Boys in the Boat. He earned an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role as Bob Barnes in the 2005 thriller Syriana and earned Best Actor nominations for Michael Clayton, Up in the Air and The Descendants. He received his second Academy Award for co-producing the 2012 Best Picture, Argo. 

On stage, Clooney starred alongside Martin Sheen and Brad Pitt in a March 2012 performance of Dustin Lance Black's play 8—a staged reenactment of the federal trial that overturned California's Prop 8 ban on same-sex marriage. The production was held at the Wilshire Ebell Theatre in Los Angeles and broadcast on YouTube to raise money for the American Foundation for Equal Rights.

A stage adaptation of Good Night, and Good Luck by Matt Charman was previously slated to premiere at Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre during its 2020-21 season, but the production was indefinitely postponed due to the coronavirus pandemic.