All the talk out of Hollywood this weekend may very well belong to Lin-Manuel Miranda and his latest movie In The Heights. But, Miranda is making news for another project, too. The writer will make his directorial debut on tick, tick… BOOM! starring Andrew Garfield.
The trailer for the film is already hitting all the high notes with Broadway fans for more than one reason. Not only is it helmed by Broadway royalty, it’s also the story of another Broadway legend, Jonathan Larson. Larson is the creator of the smash Broadway show Rent. The show opened in 1996 and won four Tony’s including Best Musical before closing after a dozen years.
tick, tick…BOOM! follows Larson—played by Oscar Nominee and Tony Award Winner Andrew Garfield—as he waits tables in NYC by day and attempts to write the next great American musical. All the while, Larson deals with pressures from his girlfriend, the moving on of his best friend, and seeing AIDS ravage his community.
In an interview on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, Garfield spoke of the project saying, “You know Lin, he’s like a crazy mixture of the most precocious eight year-old genius student of life that won’t stop talking and has a reference to everything and, simultaneously, he’s maybe one of the ultimate creative geniuses of our time.”
The movie also stars Bradley Whitford, Vanessa Hudgens and Judith Light. Miranda also serves as a producer. tick, tick…BOOM! will play in select theaters and stream on Netflix this Fall, around the 25th anniversary of Larson’s passing.