Ryan Murphy helms Mark Ruffalo in Normal Heart
Eat Pray Love writer/director and “Glee” creator Ryan Murphy has signed on to direct an adaptation of Larry Kramer’s semi-autobiographical play The Normal Heart.
Kramer wrote the script for the film and will star Mark Ruffalo in the lead role of Ned Weeks:
“I’m directing it from Larry Kramer’s beautiful script and we’re going to shoot that in June of next year,” Murphy said. “I think it’s an important story and I think Mark Ruffalo is just beyond brilliant so I’m very excited to be directing him.”
Ruffalo earlier said: “It’s basically a story of when the AIDS outbreak happened in New York. It wasn’t really taken seriously, I think specifically because it was ‘the gay cancer,’ they called it. I think it’s a really interesting time in America. I think to see someone who really does change the world by his commitment and he’s even totally by himself at times, there’s still a real power in that. I love that it’s a people-powered movement that actually changed the way our government looked at this epidemic. I think there’s a real powerful message to that and something that we forget. We can get really cynical about what we can do, it gets stacked against us and they’re all corrupt – and at the end of the day, everything starts with people. The reason they’re there is because of us.”