Over the past couple years, HBO has been a quiet-but-steady presence at the Cannes Film Festival, where they unspool their movies out of competition (with Steven Soderbergh‘s “Behind The Candelabra” an exception in 2013). “Hemingway & Gellhorn,” “Muhammad Ali’s Greatest Fight,” “Seduced And Abandoned“—those are the movies that have joined Soderbergh’s in walking the red carpet in the south of France. And while nothing is official, we’d lay down some good money that the same will happen for “The Normal Heart.” But even if not, you won’t have to wait long to see this one for yourself.
From “Glee” and “American Horror Story“-creator Ryan Murphy, based on the acclaimed play by Larry Kramer and starring Mark Ruffalo, Matt Bomer, Taylor Kitsch, Jim Parsons and Julia Roberts, the drama tells the story of the onset of the HIV-AIDS crisis in New York City in the early 1980s. It will highlight gay activists and their allies in the medical community that fought to expose the truth about the burgeoning epidemic to a city in denial. It’s powerful subject matter, and HBO already sees the story as worth continuing with a sequel already in development that would tackle the story as it continues in the late ’80s.
“The Normal Heart” airs on May 25th. Watch below.