George Clooney is set to make his Broadway debut in a stage adaptation of his 2005 film Good Night, and Good Luck about broadcast journalist Edward R. Murrow.
The actor will star as Murrow and the play is slated to premiere on Broadway next spring. Clooney wrote the play alongside Grant Heslov, and Tony Award winner David Cromer will direct the project.
“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,” Clooney said in a statement.
In a separate statement, Cromer said, “Edward R. Murrow operated from a kind of moral clarity that feels vanishingly rare in today’s media landscape. 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.”
Clooney directed the 2005 movie, which featured David Strathairn in the role of Murrow and the Ocean’s Eleven star as Fred W. Friendly, Murrow’s co-producer of his CBS news show, See It Now.
In Rolling Stone’s review of the film, Peter Travers hailed Clooney for knowing “exactly what he’s doing: blowing the dust off ancient TV history to expose today’s fat, complacent news media as even more ready to bow to networks, sponsors, and the White House.”
Travers added, “In ninety-three tight, terrifically exciting minutes, Clooney makes integrity look mighty sexy. With the help of cinematographer Robert Elswit and editor Stephen Mirrione, Clooney turns the CBS newsroom into a hothouse of journalistic risk-taking.”
The film garnered six Academy Awards, including Best Picture.