Julia Roberts, Alec Baldwin, Jim Parsons and Matt Bomer Join Ryan Murphy's The Normal Heart
Posted 01.23.12 by Ryan
Writer-director Ryan Murphy has had a pretty good run of success — having created the TV shows Nip/Tuck, American Horror Story and Glee, and his last movie, Eat, Pray, Love, made a solid $204 million worldwide — so its no surprise that actors are lining up to work with him on his next movie project: an adaptation of the Tony Award-winning play The Normal Heart.
THR reports that Julia Roberts (who worked with Murphy on Eat, Pray, Love), Alec Baldwin (It's Complicated, 30 Rock), Jim Parsons (The Big Bang Theory), and Matt Bomer (USA's White Collar, In Time) are all joining actor Mark Ruffalo (The Kids Are All Right) in the drama, based on Larry Kramer's 1985 autobiographical play about the rise of the HIV/AIDS crisis in New York’s gay community in the 1980s. Kramer wrote the screenplay for the movie version as well.
Ruffalo has been attached to Normal Heart in the lead role of Ned Weeks since last August, when Murphy optioned the rights for the play shortly after its Broadway revival, and told Deadline that the adaptation was "the thing that I’m going to do next." Baldwin will play Weeks' brother, who is having a hard time accepting his brother's sexuality, while Roberts is going to play Dr. Emma Brookner, one of the few doctors that are taking the disease seriously. Ellen Barkin won a Tony for her performance in the role of Brookner in the Broadway revival.
Bomer will play Felix Turner, a gay fashion journalist who becomes Weeks’s boyfriend. John Benjamin Hickey (The Taking of Pelham 123) won a best supporting actor Tony for his portrayal of Turner. Parsons will play Tommy Boatwright, a Southern gay rights activist. Parsons played the role in the Broadway revival.
No word yet on when The Normal Heart will start production.