George Clooney’s second film as director is getting a makeover. Good Night, and Good Luck, an almost twenty-year-old journalistic drama starring Robert Downey Jr, Jeff Daniels, David Strathairn and Patricia Clarkson, will be adapted into a play and presented on the iconic Broadway stage from spring 2025.
“Very intelligent”, “magnificent lesson in journalism”, “captivating, unexpected”… When it was released in 2005, the film received excellent reviews in the United States and abroad. It was nominated in four categories at the Golden Globes and six at the Oscars, notably in that of Best Picture, ultimately awarded to Collision, directed by Paul Haggis.
For its part, the Venice Film Festival crowned the film twice, offering the Volpi Cup for Best Actor to David Strathairn and the Osella Prize for Best Screenplay.
At the time, George Clooney was behind and in front of the camera, playing one of the main roles in his work, that of producer Fred Friendly. Twenty years later, the actor repeats the experience and this time slips into the shoes of CBS TV presenter Edward Murrow. Unsurprisingly, he also participated in the writing of this adaptation, accompanied by his faithful companion Grant Heslov, who already worked alongside him on the 2005 black and white film.
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In a press release relayed by The Guardian, George Clooney said he was “honored” to return to the front of the stage and more particularly to Broadway, “the art form and the place to which every actor aspires”.
The play will be directed by 2018 Tony Award-winning director David Cromer and will tell the story of Edward Murrow and Fred Friendly, two American journalists from the 1950s who contributed to the downfall of Senator Joseph McCarthy , at the origin of the “witch hunt” against the communists.
“Edward Murrow demonstrated a moral clarity that seems increasingly rare in today’s media landscape,” David Cromer said in the press release. These early live television broadcasts had an immediacy that today can only be effectively captured on stage, in front of an audience.”