Actors George Clooney, Robert Downey Jr to make Broadway debut in separate productions

NEW YORK – Hollywood actor George Clooney is planning to make his Broadway debut in 2025 in a stage adaptation of Good Night, And Good Luck, the 2005 film he directed, co-wrote and starred in.

Clooney, 63, will play Edward R. Murrow, the pioneering newscaster whose storied broadcast career in the mid-20th century made him a journalism icon.

That role was played by American actor David Strathairn in the movie, while Clooney portrayed Murrow’s collaborator Fred W. Friendly.

Good Night, And Good Luck portrays the period when Murrow’s work brought him into conflict with United States Senator Joseph McCarthy, who became notorious for the excesses of his anti-communist crusade in the early 1950s.

Clooney wrote the movie with producer Grant Heslov and the two are teaming up again to adapt it for Broadway. It will be directed by David Cromer, who won a Tony Award for directing The Band’s Visit.

The play’s producing team – Seaview, Sue Wagner, John Johnson, Jean Doumanian and Robert Fox – announced on May 13 the plan to stage Good Night, And Good Luck in 2025 at a Shubert Theatre, but offered no other details.

American actor Robert Downey Jr will also be making his Broadway debut, in 2024 in McNeal, a new drama by Pulitzer-winning playwright Ayad Akhtar.

The play is about a gifted novelist with a difficult family life and a potentially problematic interest in artificial intelligence. Downey, 59, will play the writer.

The production is being staged by Lincoln Centre Theatre, one of four non-profits with Broadway houses, at its Vivian Beaumont Theatre. Previews are to begin on Sept 5 and the opening is scheduled for Sept 30.

McNeal will be directed by Bartlett Sher, a resident director at Lincoln Centre Theatre and a Tony winner for South Pacific.

Downey’s stage experience is limited. His one off-Broadway credit, American Passion, opened and closed on the same day in 1983 – and he said in a statement: “It’s been 40 years since I was last on ‘the boards’, but hopefully I’ll knock the dust off quick.”

Akhtar is a playwright and a novelist with an appetite for complex and thorny subjects, whose previous plays have explored finance and Islam. He has had a long relationship with Lincoln Centre Theatre, which first produced his Pulitzer-winning play, Disgraced, on its off-off-Broadway stage; and presented his plays The Who & The What off-off-Broadway and Junk on Broadway.

Akhtar is also working on a musical. He is one of the book writers for a stage adaptation of the film La La Land (2016) that is now in development. NYTIMES