When Ryan Murphy’s deal is up, what the heck is Netflix going to fill all of those hours with? As if he wasn’t busy enough with his network shows, Murphy has delivered for Netflix two seasons of The Politician, a season of Hollywood, and the upcoming One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest series, Ratched. He even has his musical film adaptation of The Prom coming up. And yet there’s still room for more, as Murphy is also a producer on The Boys in the Band, which is based on the game-changing 1968 stageplay.
Starring Jim Parsons, Matt Bomer, Zachary Quinto, Andrew Rannells, Robin de Jesus, and more, the film takes place in a New York City apartment where a group of male friends have gathered for a raucous party. The story is set in 1968, the same year the play debuted and changed the way gay men’s lives are depicted both on the stage and the screen. A film version was released in 1970 directed by William Friedkin.
Behind the camera for this new version is Joe Mantello, making this the playwright’s first feature since 1997’s Love! Valour! Compassion!
The Boys in the Band hits Netflix on September 30th.
SYNOPSIS: More than fifty years after Mart Crowley’s play became an unexpected smash hit for putting gay men’s lives center stage with honesty and humor, THE BOYS IN THE BAND returns to the screen in a new adaptation that reunites acclaimed director Joe Mantello with the all-star cast of the Tony-winning, 2018 Broadway production. In 1968 New York City – when being gay was still considered to be best kept behind closed doors – a group of friends gather for a raucous birthday party hosted by Michael (Jim Parsons), a screenwriter who spends and drinks too much, in honor of the sharp-dressed and sharp-tongued Harold (Zachary Quinto). Other partygoers include Donald (Matt Bomer), Michael’s former flame, now mired in self-analysis; Larry (Andrew Rannells), a randy commercial artist living with Hank (Tuc Watkins), a school teacher who has just left his wife; Bernard (Michael Benjamin Washington), a librarian tiptoeing around fraught codes of friendship alongside Emory (Robin de Jesús), a decorator who never holds back; and a guileless hustler (Charlie Carver), hired to be Harold’s gift for the night. What begins as an evening of drinks and laughs gets upended when Alan (Brian Hutchison), Michael’s straight-laced college roommate, shows up unexpectedly and each man is challenged to confront long-buried truths that threaten the foundation of the group’s tight bond.
