Netflix has released the first official trailer for tick, tick…BOOM! starring Tony Award winner Andrew Garfield (Angels in America) and directed by Tony Award winner Lin-Manuel Miranda (Hamilton!). Garfield, who had to take singing lessons and learn to play the piano for the role, stars as composer and playwright Jonathan Larson, the creative force behind Rent who passed away from an aortic dissection at 35.
Netflix’s official trailer release was accompanied by a new poster as well as seven new photos from the film.
In addition to Andrew Garfield, the cast includes Alexandra Shipp, Robin de Jesús, Joshua Henry, Mj Rodriguez, Bradley Whitford, Tariq Trotter, Judith Light, and Vanessa Hudgens.
“It’s a strange thing when there’s someone like Jon that you didn’t have any relationship to before, and then suddenly now there’s this mysterious forever connection that I am never, ever going to let go,” stated Garfield in a recent interview with The New York Times. “I just feel so lucky that Jon was revealed to me, because now I don’t remember who I was before I knew who Jon was.”
Starring in the film helped Garfield come to terms with his mother’s death in an unexpected way. “Every frame, every moment, every breath of this film is an attempted honoring of Jon. And, on a more personal level, it’s an honoring of my mom. She is someone who showed me where I was supposed to go in my life. She set me on a path. We lost her just before Covid, just before we started shooting, after a long battle with pancreatic cancer. So, for me, I was able to continue her song on the ocean and the wave of Jonathan’s songs. It was an attempt to honor him in his unfinished song, and her in her unfinished song, and have them meet,” explained Garfield in his September 2021 interview with NYT.
Tony Award winner Steven Levenson wrote the screenplay, based on music by Jonathan Larson, and served as an executive producer with Celia Costas and Julie Larson. Lin-Manuel Miranda, Brian Grazer, Ron Howard, and Julie Oh produced.
“tick, tick…BOOM! is a corner of the world I know from every angle. I know what it’s like to be a struggling songwriter. I know what it is to be in your 20s writing that one musical, what it’s like to be in New York with a bunch of friends with artistic dreams and then watch them drop off one by one, to real life, while you’re still hanging on,” said Miranda. “It’s a story of doubling down on your craft in the face of impossible odds, which is not unique to musical theater — it’s the struggle of any artist trying to make a living doing the thing they love.”
Netflix will release the film in select theaters on November 12, 2021 followed by a release on the streaming service on November 19th.
The Plot, Courtesy of Netflix:
Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award winner Lin-Manuel Miranda makes his feature directorial debut with tick, tick…BOOM!, an adaptation of the autobiographical musical by Jonathan Larson, who revolutionized theater as the creator of Rent. The film follows Jon (Garfield), a young theater composer who’s waiting tables at a New York City diner in 1990 while writing what he hopes will be the next great American musical.
Days before he’s due to showcase his work in a make-or-break performance, Jon is feeling the pressure from everywhere: from his girlfriend Susan, who dreams of an artistic life beyond New York City; from his friend Michael, who has moved on from his dream to a life of financial security; amidst an artistic community being ravaged by the AIDS epidemic. With the clock ticking, Jon is at a crossroads and faces the question everyone must reckon with: What are we meant to do with the time we have?
