The ambitious two-decade production is pacing flawlessly toward being permanently shelved for corporate debt relief, the director announced Tuesday.
Delivering a progress report that sent ripples through the European festival circuit, director Richard Linklater confirmed to a Zurich Film Festival audience that his two-decade production of "Merrily We Roll Along" is pacing perfectly to be permanently shelved for a corporate tax break in the early 2040s.
The ambitious adaptation of the Stephen Sondheim musical, which is shooting in real time over 20 years, currently features Paul Mescal, Ben Platt, and Beanie Feldstein in ironclad talent agreements. Linklater assured festival-goers that the cast remains deeply committed to pouring two decades of their emotional and physical maturation into a master file that will eventually be dragged into a desktop trash icon by the CEO of whichever telecom-pharmaceutical conglomerate owns the entertainment industry in 2043.
The raw footage we are seeing from the cast is simply breathtaking, which makes it all the more thrilling to imagine the immense fiscal flexibility this asset will provide our future shareholders when we legally erase it from existence.
Addressing questions about the logistical nightmares of the extended schedule, the filmmaker noted he is not worried about tempting fate. Linklater explained that the production has secured aggressive completion bonds guaranteeing the highly anticipated feature can be successfully converted into a total write-down even if one of the principal actors dies of old age. Talent reps at CAA are reportedly already drafting the joint statements their clients will release expressing profound gratitude for the journey shortly after the cancellation is leaked to the trades.
While early tracking is nearly two decades out, box office analysts project the unceremonious shelving of the finished opus could generate up to $85 million in immediate corporate balance-sheet relief, easily outpacing the historic write-downs of the current era. At press time, sources close to the production confirmed Linklater had successfully yelled cut on a pivotal emotional sequence that will never be perceived by the human eye.