George Clooney will star as legendary newsman Edward R. Murrow in a Broadway adaptation of Good Night, and Good Luck.
Clooney wrote, directed and starred in the 2005 historical drama about Murrow’s coverage of Senator Joseph McCarthey’s anti-communist tribunals in the 1950s. The film was nominated for six Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director.
Two decades later, Clooney and co-screenwriter Grant Heslov have reunited to bring the story to stage. David Cromer will direct the production, which will debut next spring at a Shubert Theatre.
While Clooney portrayed CBS News correspondent Joseph Weshba in the original film, he will step into the role of Murrow himself for the upcoming Broadway adaptation. For Clooney, the performance will mark his Broadway debut. “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,” he said in a statement.
“Edward R. Murrow operated from a kind of moral clarity that feels vanishingly rare in today’s media landscape,” Cromer added in his own 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.”