Frost/Nixon, currently a hit at London's Donmar Warehouse, is headed for Broadway and the big screen. Director Ron Howard is on board to helm a film version of Peter Morgan's play, according to Variety. There are also plans to move Donmar Artistic Director Michael Grandage's production, starring Michael Sheen and Frank Langella, to the West End and Broadway.
The film version would follow a West End and Broadway transfer, although no specific dates for bringing the play to New York were announced. The Gielgud Theatre has been mentioned as a possible home for the show in the West End following the Donmar engagement, which ends on October 7. Frost/Nixon looks at the background and filming of the historic 1977 television interviews between British talk show host David Frost and former U.S. President Richard Nixon.
The production opened to warm reviews on August 15 at the Donmar. In his Theatre.com Review of the play, Matt Wolf wrote, "The face has it—Frank Langella's, that is—and that will be enough for many when it comes to Frost/Nixon, a facile if entertaining enough play lifted out of its over-expository rut courtesy of Langella's revelatory reading of America's late, disgraced 37th president. Why the face? Because television and film writer Peter Morgan's debut play builds to a tête-à-tête whose impact depends on a held close-up in full confessional mode Morgan is enough of a dab celluloid hand to allow video to do its bit of the two-time Tony winner… Throw in a typically astute, uncaricatured turn by Welshman Michael Sheen as the master interlocutor David now Sir David Frost, and you have a play whose stars command attention even if the writing sometimes does not… A thriller whose denouement is preordained, Frost/Nixon fields the genuine thrill that comes when two actors from either side of the pond lock horns in a battle that—unlike their forbears—Langella and Sheen both win."
The film version will be produced by Working Title and Imagine Entertainment. Morgan will adapt his own play for the screen.
