Watch This to Get Ready for Merrily We Roll Along, Starring Jonathan Groff, Daniel Radcliffe and Lindsay Mendez, to Hit Cinemas

Merrily We Roll Along, starring Jonathan Groff, Daniel Radcliffe and Lindsay Mendez, opened at the Hudson Theatre on October 10, 2023 and wasted no time in becoming one of Broadway’s hottest tickets. The revival of the Stephen Sondheim-George Furth musical went on to win four Tony Awards, including for Best Revival of a musical, and played through July 7, 2024. 

The filmed version of the production arrives in movie theaters on December 5. For those who missed out the first time, it’s an opportunity to witness, in cinematic close-up, one of Broadway’s most lauded revivals in recent memory. For those lucky enough to have seen the show on stage, it’s an opportunity to be moved all over again by the story of a three-way friendship devolving from youthful idealism to bitterness and recrimination.

Initially Sondheim’s most infamous flop, marking the end of the composer’s triumphant collaboration with the director Harold Prince, the Maria Friedman-directed revival of Merrily succeeded in unearthing the emotional riches of the work. Driving the show—along with one of Sondheim’s fizziest and most affecting scores—were grounded, sympathetic performances from Groff, Radcliffe (both Tony winners for their work) and Mendez. “[Sondheim] leaves space in his writing for the humanity of the people that are performing it,” Groff told Broadway.com Editor-in-Chief Paul Wontorek. “I think that’s maybe part of why it feels so personal to see the show and to watch the show—because he allows that personal connection to happen.”

Meanwhile, filming is still underway—six years down, 14 more to go—for the movie adaptation of the musical starring Paul Mescal, Beanie Feldstein and Ben Platt. Director Richard Linklater, whose Lorenz Hart lament Blue Moon is still playing in cinemas, is shooting the film on-and-off over 20 years, tapping into the preoccupations and techniques explored in the coming-of-age film Boyhood and the Before Sunrise trilogy. The release is expected some time around the year 2040.

If that sounds like a monumental undertaking, Platt himself is in no less awe of the project—one that inherently asks its stars to regularly contemplate themes of life, time, art and friendship. “It’s just crazy that we’re trying to do it,” he told Tamsen Fadal on The Broadway Show last year. “We sort of have to treat it like little short films that happen every so often because if you look too far ahead, it’s like, how are we ever going to get there?” Platt also paid tribute to Sondheim, who passed away in 2021. “It’s such a gift and it’s also a way to just have Sondheim guardian angeling my life.”

Watch the video below.