HBO is continuing its support for all things gay (following Behind The Candelabra and commissioning a new Frisco set gay-themed series) with The Normal Heart, which Glee creator Ryan Murphy has been trying to get off the ground for a few years, but which only came to fruition when the cable channel put up the money.
The film version of Larry Kramer’s acclaimed AIDS play is now in production in New York, and while there have been quite a few unofficial snaps from the set floating around the Internet, it’s Mark Ruffalo who’s given us our first proper look at the movie. He tweeted it in reaction to the Supreme Court rulings, saying, ‘Everybody on set of “The Normal Heart” is celebrating this historic day. #DOMA. THANK YOU LARRY KRAMER’
The image shows Ruffalo alongside Taylor Kitsch, who will be joined by the likes of Julia Roberts, Matt Bomer, Jim Parsons, Jonathan Groff for the movie.
Ruffalo is taking on the lead role of Ned Weeks, who in the early 80s is one of the first people to raise an alarm about the new disease that initially was known as ‘Gay Cancer’, but later became HIV/AIDS. Big Bang Theory star Jim Parsons will be gay activist Tommy Boatwright, a role he previously took in a 2011 Broadway revival of the play.
Julia Roberts is Emma Brookner, a wheelchair bound doctor who is the only one of her peers in New York taking AIDS seriously. Matthew Bomer is set for Felix Turner, a gay fashion journalist who becomes Ned’s lover. Groff is playing an early victim of the disease called Craig, whose boyfriend, Taylor Kitsch, starts off as a closeted investment banker but eventually becomes an AIDS activist.
Larry Kramer’s play is considered one of the most important reactions to the early AIDS epidemic, written by someone who has on the front lines of the fight, such as co-founding Gay Men’s Health Crisis and ACT UP. He later wrote a follow-up, The Destiny Of Me.
The film will air on HBO early next year.
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