George Clooney’s Broadway debut, “Good Night, and Good Luck,” has been one of the sensations of the 2024-25 theater season, breaking box office records and drawing packed houses of audiences eager to see the popular movie star in a timely drama about the importance of an independent press.
Now the play will become much more widely available: CNN is planning to broadcast the penultimate performance, on June 7 at 7 p.m. Eastern. The performance will be preceded and followed by coverage of, and discussion about, the show and the state of journalism.
“We were looking at taking the play on the road, and taking it to London, and taking it to Paris,” Clooney said in an interview on Thursday, adding, “but we also thought it never is going to be exactly what it is right now, with the same cast, and we thought it would be nice to have a record of it.
“And then we thought, because the newscasts are all done live, it is the perfect thing to try to create on live television, which is always exciting — there no safety net, and it’s a fun thing to do.”
Clooney said that he expects the play will be available to stream after the live broadcast, but that he does not yet know where. “That’s what we’re still working on right now,” he said. “The question is where does it go from here, and we’ve had three different offers and we’re negotiating to find out what the best position is.”
The Broadway production of “Good Night, and Good Luck,” which began performances in March, is adapted from the 2005 film about a confrontation between the television journalist Edward R. Murrow and Joseph R. McCarthy, the crusading anti-communist senator from Wisconsin.
“Unfortunately, this play always is timely,” Clooney said. “What journalists do for a living is always going to be challenged by people in power — they don’t like it unless they can control it. And there are some things about this that are more timely right now, of course.”
Clooney said that “Good Night, and Good Luck” had initially been conceived as a live production for CBS, before it became a movie. He also noted that years ago he had starred in a live televised version of “Fail Safe,” and said that he had once wanted to do “ER” as a live show.
“There’s another part of this that means something to me: I’ve had this really wonderful experience being on Broadway, and I think it’s important for a lot of people to be able to see what it’s like to come to Broadway, see a Broadway play, in cities all across the country and all across the world, because it’s pretty exciting.”
Clooney has been nominated for a Tony Award for portraying Murrow in the play; he also wrote it, in collaboration with Grant Heslov, and the two of them are among the lead producers. (Clooney played a different role, of a CBS news executive, in the film, which he also directed and co-wrote.)
Michael Paulson is the theater reporter for The Times.
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