How George Clooney's ‘Good Night, and Good Luck' Is Preparing to Go Live on CNN

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4 hours ago

George Clooney's play Good Night, and Good Luck is set to air live on CNN this Saturday, in a move meant to spread the play's timely message and raise the profile of Broadway.
The idea for the live broadcast originated with Clooney, who is starring in the production as legendary journalist Edward R. Murrow, and co-wrote the play. The play follows Murrow as he pursues reporting exposing the tactics of Sen. Joseph McCarthy, and stands up to pushback from McCarthy as well as CBS station heads.
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'One of the reasons that George came to Broadway with this show is because the story is deeply, deeply meaningful to him,' said Sue Wagner, one of the lead producers. 'It was really important to him to stand on stage every night and say to people, 'This isn't about power unchecked. It's about 'What are you prepared to do? How are you prepared to save us?''
The play is set to air on CNN and CNN International at 7 p.m. ET, as well as stream on the CNN website and live on Max. CNN is also airing a preshow outside the theater, hosted by anchor Pamela Brown, and a postshow discussion with Anderson Cooper about the play and the state of journalism.
'You want it to be a big event. You want it to land big,' said Amy Entelis, executive vp talent, CNN Originals and Creative Development.
The Broadway producers and Clooney mulled over different kinds of captures that have taken place, including a filmed production like Hamilton on Disney+, but landed on a live broadcast given the time remaining in the run (the play closes June 8) and the reach it could have. In addition to Hamilton, previous Broadway shows have been captured for later release, including the recent revival of Purlie Victorious, which aired last year on PBS, but doing a live broadcast is the rarity.
Production company 2929 Entertainment, which is owned by Todd Wagner and Mark Cuban, Jeff Skoll's Participant Media and Clooney are financing the live broadcast. The entities produced the 2005 film on which the play is based and were also producers on the play, holding the underlying rights, as well as the live capture rights.
The additional investment also comes after the production recouped its $9.5 million capitalization in just over seven weeks and has repeatedly broken the record for highest weekly gross of any Broadway play in history, with more than $4 million grossed last week and an average ticket price of $339.
Den of Thieves, a production company that has previously worked with Clooney and on live events, including the VMAs, is executive producing the live broadcast and plans to use 20 cameras, with 14 camera operators, positioned in the aisles and around the live audience that will be sitting in the 1,500-seat theater Saturday night. The idea is to film the production as it appears on stage, rather than in a stylized broadcast, which also means sometimes showing the audience.
'It was very critical for George that we capture this as a theater experience,' said Jesse Ignjatovic, co-founder of Den of Thieves.
CNN will also be airing the production without commercials, in keeping with the Broadway experience.
The team plans to shoot the Friday evening show and the Saturday matinee as a rehearsal, which will then be reviewed by Clooney, the play's co-writer Grant Heslov and others, before the live broadcast. The production team's director has already seen the show 12 times in preparation.
Both CNN and Den of Thieves say they're very accustomed to shooting live events, and while they have never done a live broadcast of a Broadway show, they expect it to run smoothly, given the fact that the cast has been performing this play on Broadway live for weeks. Den of Thieves will have a television production truck in front of the theater to liaise with CNN during the broadcast.
CNN received the call from Clooney and found that the programming fit into their larger strategy with CNN Originals, which had previously aired a prerecorded version of Colin Quinn's Off-Broadway play, as well as concerts and the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, among others.
The goal with this is to bring different kinds of programming to the regular CNN viewers and grow the audience, particularly as cable news networks are looking to bring in viewers among a broader linear ratings decline, Entelis said.
'This was a great idea in the sense that, obviously the theme of the play is what was happening to the press in the 1950s and very much relevant to what people talk about today in our audience, what we talk about sometimes. And so syncing that up just made all the sense of the world,' Entelis said.
Both Wagner and John Johnson, a lead producer on the Broadway show, also view the broadcast as being good for the theater industry, since it stands to bring a large amount of attention to Broadway on Saturday evening, which can then carry over into the Tony Awards Sunday evening, where Clooney is nominated. And the hope is that making a Broadway show widely available helps convince audiences to buy a ticket to another show.
In addition to the high cost of filming a show, which can be prohibitive, Broadway producers have also worried that filming a show would stop attendees from buying a ticket to see it live. Good Night, and Good Luck is ending its run a day after the broadcast, and has done well financially. But Johnson also said that mode of thinking should no longer apply to Broadway, at least when it is event-style theater. He points to the success of the Wicked movie and the increased box office at Wicked on Broadway as one example.
'I think there is an inherent nature of people wanting to be in the room with a group of people and a group of actors on stage, sharing that story and experiencing it all at the same time,' Johnson said.
There have been discussions about a future production of Good Night, and Good Luck in London, but nothing has been announced yet.
CNN is well-suited to do more live events, Entelis said, and while she is not sure it will be another Broadway show, the network is looking for 'more innovative, experimental ways to move the needle.'
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