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HBO makes it official: Ryan Murphy will direct “The Normal Heart” to air in 2014

At last!

It’s official: the film version of Larry Kramer’s The Normal Heart will begin production later this year and will air on HBO in 2014.

The announcement was made here in Pasadena where I am attending the TV Critics Association’s annual winter press tour.

HBO has confirmed some of what has previously been reported: Ryan Murphy (Glee, The New Normal, American Horror Story) and the cast will be led by Julia Roberts, Mark Ruffalo and Matt Bomer.

The film tells the story on the onset of the HIV-AIDS crisis in New York City in the early 1980s. It looks at the nation’s sexual politics as gay activists and their allies in the medical community fought to expose the truth about the burgeoning epidemic to a city in denial.

Roberts stars as a paraplegic physician who treats several of the earlier victims of the disease, Ruffalo will play a gay man who witnesses the disease begin to take the lives of many in his community and Bomer plays a reporter in the film who becomes the lover of Ruffalo’s character.

‘We are so proud to be involved with this monumental project,’ HBO programming president Michael Lombardo said in a statement Friday. ‘Ryan has assembled an extraordinary cast to bring Larry Kramer’s landmark theatrical achievement to the screen for the first time, and we couldn’t be more thrilled to bring this important film to HBO.’

Murphy previously directed Roberts in the feature film Eat Pray Love.

Kramer wrote the screenplay based on his largely autobiographical Tony Award-winning play. Kramer is not only a writer, he also is a well-known activist who helped fund the Gay Men’s Health Crisis and (GMHC) and AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP) at the height of the epidemic.

FILE UNDER: Movies

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