Julia Roberts and Alec Baldwin have signed on for The Normal Heart.
The duo will join an all-star cast that also includes Mark Ruffalo and Jim Parsons in the big-screen adaptation of the Tony Award-winning play according to the Hollywood Reporter. The film will be helmed by Ryan Murphy, the co-creator of Glee whose last film was Eat, Pray, Love in which Roberts also appeared.
The drama details the rise of HIV/AIDS in New York’s gay community in the 1980s and won the Tony for best revival last year having being originally staged off-Broadway in 1985.
Murphy optioned the rights to the play last August and had Ruffallo attached as Ned Weeks, who is one of the first to raise an alarm when what was then known as 'gay cancer' surfaces in New York.
Roberts will play Emma Brookner, a wheel-chair bound doctor who is one of the only doctors in New York talking the new disease seriously and Baldwin will play Weeks’ brother, a lawyer having a hard time dealing with his sibling's sexuality.
