Richard Linklater

Source: La Biennale di Venezia

Richard Linklater

Sony Pictures Classics has picked up all rights worldwide to Richard Linklater’s upcoming Blue Moon starring Ethan Hawke, Margaret Qualley, Bobby Cannavale, and Andrew Scott.

Production is scheduled to begin in early July in Dublin on the feature, which profiles the final days of Lorenz Hart, one half of the songwriting team Rodgers & Hart.

Blue Moon is set primarily in Sardi’s Restaurant on March 31, 1943, the opening night of Oklahoma!, Rodgers’ first collaboration with Oscar Hammerstein II as Hart’s replacement.

Sony Pictures Classics is co-financing with Renovo Media Group and will support the production. Sony will release the film worldwide.

Robert Kaplow wrote the screenplay. Linklater will produce alongside Mike Blizzard, with whom he produced recent Netflix debut Hit Man, and Apollo 1⁄2, and John Sloss, who produced Linklater’s Boyhood.

Blue Moon will be a Detour/Renovo production in association with Wild Atlantic Pictures, Under The Influence and Cinetic Media.

Executive producers include Wild Atlantic’s Macdara Kelleher, Donna Eperon and John Keville, Renovo Media Group’s David Kingland, Lisa Crnic and Aaron Wiederspahn, and Cinetic’s Steven Farneth.

Sony Classics collaborated with Linklater on his first release Slacker, as well as Suburbia, and Before Midnight.

The company said, “Almost a year ago, Rick, Ethan, and John reached out to us with Robert Kaplow’s amazing script Blue Moon. Helping them over the following months to bring it together has been incredibly exciting and now, on the verge of production, with this fantastic cast and crew in place and Rick at the helm, we are thrilled to finally announce it and bring the film to audiences everywhere in the world.”