Director Richard Linklater has provided a progress update on his long-form musical film "Merrily We Roll Along" during a Zurich Film Festival career retrospective. Based on Stephen Sondheim's 1981 musical, the project represents an ambitious undertaking that will span 20 years of production, following the approach Linklater successfully pioneered with his 2014 film "Boyhood". The filmmaker acknowledged the unique challenge of maintaining secrecy whilst shooting such a high-profile project, as audiences and press have kept keen interest throughout the production.

Linklater revealed that the film is being shot in nine sections across the 20-year timeline, with three sections already completed and filming for the fourth section beginning in a few months—placing the project's completion date around 2040. The production stars Paul Mescal, Ben Platt and Beanie Feldstein, who will age naturally in real time throughout the shoot. The film adapts the 1934 George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart play about Franklin Shepard, a Broadway composer who abandons his friends to pursue Hollywood producing, with the narrative moving backwards through time to reveal pivotal moments in his life. Linklater expressed confidence in the long-form approach, noting it remains the only way to properly tell this story about friendship and artistic compromise.