Background Tick, Tick... Boom! began as a rock monologue titled
30/90 and later
Boho Days that Larson wrote between 1989 and 1990 and first performed at
Second Stage Theater from September 6–9, 1990.
Boho Days was a semi-autobiographical work following a musical theater composer named "Jon" who tries to figure out his next project after a failed workshop of his musical
Superbia, based on Larson's own experience in trying to get
Superbia staged. The piece changed significantly in this period, as it was written in response to events in Larson's life: the character of Susan notably changed with each iteration based on Larson's relationship with his real girlfriend Janet Charleston. Larson's friend and producer Victoria Leacock Hoffman recalled the work became increasingly pessimistic with Larson's increasing frustrations with his career. Following Larson's death, Leacock Hoffman and Robyn Goodman recruited playwright
David Auburn to transform the solo piece into a three person musical. Auburn reworked both the story and structure of
Tick, Tick... Boom! while still attempting to preserve Larson's writing. Besides the addition of dialogue, one of Auburn's most significant contributions was the
Superbia workshop plot (in all of Larson's versions of the script, the
Superbia workshop took place before the events of the show). This change, besides giving a sense of plot progression, also provided the opportunity to include the previously unreleased song "Come to Your Senses", which was originally written for
Superbia. The film was announced in July 2018 with the news that Miranda would make his directorial debut with the musical adaptation, with
Imagine Entertainment and Julie Oh producing and
Dear Evan Hansen's
Steven Levenson penning the script. Miranda, Levenson, and Oh treated the process like creating a musical, including holding a secret workshop at the
United Palace in Washington Heights on July 16, 2018. It was during this stage that
Andrew Garfield joined the process, having finished his run in the Broadway revival of
Angels in America the day before. The team set a production start date of March 2020, in order to give Miranda and Levenson time to conduct research, and for Garfield to take formal vocal and piano training. By June 2019,
Netflix had acquired the film, with
Andrew Garfield the top choice to star. In January 2020, it was also announced that choreographer
Ryan Heffington would be working on the film.
Writing In order to adapt the musical for film, Miranda and Levenson conducted a significant amount of their own research. This included interviews with friends, family and colleagues such as Charleston,
Roger Bart, Matt O'Grady (whom Michael is based on), and Ira Weitzman. Both Weitzman and Bart became characters in the film, played by
Jonathan Marc Sherman and
Joshua Henry respectively, as a direct result of these conversations. Larson's sister Julie, who was a producer on the film, discouraged Miranda and Levenson from sanitizing Larson's image, telling them to "get all the warts. Get all of that good stuff." Bart recalled that Larson could be "a pain in the ass" when his work was not being received the way he wanted, but he was generous to his collaborators once in the rehearsal room. This insight heavily influenced Larson's portrayal in the finished film. Miranda and Levenson also accessed the Jonathan Larson Papers at the
Library of Congress, in which the original scripts and demo tapes for
Superbia,
30/90,
Boho Days, and
Tick, Tick... Boom! exist. Scenes from these scripts were used to create new scenes for the film: for example, a section where Larson recalled receiving feedback from a man named "Robert Rimer" at a musical theater workshop was adapted for the film, with "Rimer" replaced by the man's real name, Stephen Sondheim. In one early draft, Larson wrote that Susan's green dress was a commission made by a fashion designer/fellow waiter at the Moondance Diner named Carolyn: this led to the creation of the character Carolyn, played by Michaela Jaé Rodriguez, for the film. The screenplay features a framing device loosely inspired by the Auburn script of Larson performing the monologue with two other performers, in this case Roger and Karessa, the former of whom is inspired by Roger Bart's role as background vocalist for performances of
Boho Days and
Tick, Tick... Boom!. As a result of this device, certain songs that are sung in the Auburn script by characters in the narrative are instead sung by Jonathan, Roger, and Karessa, interwoven with the drama onscreen. "Come to Your Senses" is an example of a song that changed because of this device. In the 2001 production it was performed by the actress who plays both Susan and Karessa, while in the film it was turned into a duet between Karessa and Susan for dramatic purposes. However, Jonathan sings a riff of "Sugar" to Ira Weitzman at one point in the finished film. Miranda and Levenson also added three songs that were in previous versions of
Tick, Tick... Boom! but not included in the Auburn script: "Boho Days", "Play Game", and "Swimming". "Boho Days" was the original opening number of
Boho Days and was previously only available as a bonus track on the 2001 Off-Broadway cast recording, extracted from a demo tape recorded by Larson himself. Like Auburn had in 2001 by including "Come to Your Senses", Miranda and Levenson used the film as an opportunity to release more of the
Superbia soundtrack, specifically a song titled "Sextet" as the lyrics "Everyone will be there" thematically fit with Larson's anxieties about the workshop.
Joshua Henry,
Judith Light, and
Bradley Whitford would join in January 2020.
Jordan Fisher, who had starred in
Rent: Live, was meant to appear in the film as a character named "Simon" but due to the film's delays his wedding was scheduled on the same day his scene was to be shot, so he was replaced by
Noah Robbins. However, the scene was ultimately cut from the film. Fisher's name had been listed on the film's casting announcements, and press reports continued to list both him and Robbins as members of the cast even after the film's release.
Filming Principal photography began as scheduled in March 2020. However, the production only filmed for eight days before the
COVID-19 pandemic forced a shutdown, with the last day of filming taking place on March 12, 2020 outside of Larson's real apartment at 508 Greenwich Street. During the hiatus the cast, crew, and producers held weekly meetings on
Zoom, which were colloquially referred to as "Tick, Tick... Zooms!". and wrapped in November 2020. Location shoots included the
Delacorte Theater in Central Park for "Why", the Underground Theater at the Abrons Arts Center (part of the
Henry Street Settlement) for the musical theater workshop scene, Teatro LATEA at the
Clemente Soto Velez Cultural and Educational Center for Susan's dance recital, and the dance studios at
Hunter College for the
Superbia workshop. The singing in the finished film is a mix of actors lip-syncing to pre-recorded tracks, re-recording their vocals in post-production, and singing live on set, with the choice to use one or the others dependent on the environment and tone of the scene. In the case of "Why", Garfield felt the emotions in the pre-recorded playback track were insufficient, and so sang the song live during filming at the Delacorte Theater in March. The team had hoped to include more locations associated with
Rent, such as
Tompkins Square Park and the Life Cafe in the East Village, but COVID restrictions resulted in most of these scenes being moved to the diner. The film's
Superbia workshop montage consists of footage of the actors lip-syncing to a playlist compiled by Miranda, including songs from
American Idiot and
Hair: the last song on the playlist was "
Seasons of Love". During filming in late 2020, rumors leaked that Garfield was to make a return appearance as
Spider-Man/Peter Parker in the then-unnamed
upcoming Spider-Man film. Miranda approached Garfield on-set to ask if he was in it, to which a flustered Garfield gave an unconvincing denial. Miranda walked away from the conversation thinking Garfield would need to get better at lying: Garfield later became well known for his repeated denials that he was in
Spider-Man: No Way Home during the press tour for
Tick, Tick... Boom!.
Set and visual design The film's production designers painstakingly recreated both the Moondance Diner and Larson's former apartment at 508 Greenwich Street. In the latter case, the team had access to footage of the apartment shot by Larson himself for insurance purposes, a mere two weeks before his death. This footage allowed them to identify the exact positions of objects, some of which were actually sourced to decorate the set. Original
Rent stars
Adam Pascal,
Daphne Rubin-Vega, and
Wilson Jermaine Heredia visited the apartment set while filming their cameos for "Sunday" at Miranda's invitation. They described it as a surreal experience, as all three had gathered at the real apartment during
Rent's development. Heredia described the set as feeling "haunted", noting "...it wasn't [Jonathan Larson's] apartment; he was never in that place—but they spared no detail in order to make it look like his place."
Musical sequences In directing the film's musical sequences, Miranda borrowed heavily from his experience working with
Jon M. Chu on the
film adaptation of his musical
In the Heights, namely balancing out a realistic approach versus allowing the musical sequences to exist in Jonathan's head. Cinematographer Alice Brooks highlighted "Sunday" and "Swimming" as two particularly challenging sequences, as the two exist in Larson's head more so than other songs in the film. The scenes were conceptualized between Miranda, Brooks, Levenson, the assistant director, the storyboard artist, and the production designer in a collaborative process akin to theater, based on making discoveries at each step. For "Swimming", Miranda came up with the idea for the "30" at the bottom of the swimming pool to turn into a treble clef, and thus the pool floor becoming sheet music, during a scouting visit to the pool with Brooks. Although David Armstrong is credited as Andrew Garfield's swimming double, Garfield performed all of the swimming in the film himself: his father Richard Garfield is the head coach of the
Guildford City Swimming Club and had trained him in the past. Miranda recalled that Armstrong turned to him after watching Garfield's swimming and declared, "I can't swim that fast." The elder Garfield was originally supposed to cameo as the man whom Jonathan tries to overtake in the pool, but he was unable to come to New York for the shoot due to the film's COVID delays. This included the actors who inspired him, particularly Peters for her role in
Sunday in the Park with George, but also his future collaborators in Pascal, Rubin-Vega, and Heredia, as well as cast members from shows that Miranda considers "direct descendants" of Larson's work: Malone appears dressed as Big Alison from
Fun Home, while Goldsberry and Soo wear the colors and strike the pose of the Schuyler sisters from Miranda's own
Hamilton. Miranda also recruited
Michael Starobin, who orchestrated
Sunday in the Park with George, to achieve the sound of the Sondheim parody. The scene was shot under heavy COVID protocols, particularly for some of the older actors. Miranda's cameo in the scene was written for
Chip Zien and
Joanna Gleason, who starred in the original Broadway cast of Sondheim's
Into the Woods, but COVID restrictions prevented them from appearing. The first scene at the diner during "30/90" was originally a different scene with Michael and Jonathan packing up Michael's things at their apartment. During preparation for reshoots, Kerstein pitched the scene at the diner so the sequence could introduce the characters of Freddy and Carolyn, minimizing time needed later in the film: he was alarmed when Levenson and Miranda shot a four-page scene in response, though he was relieved to learn they were open to cutting dialogue if needed. Likewise, they would need the context of not just Larson's death, but his legacy through his most well-known show,
Rent. Miranda did not want this information conveyed through onscreen text at the end, despite Kerstein joking this is traditional with even critically-acclaimed biopics. Miranda argued such a method was too obvious, and that the information needed to be incorporated into the film in a natural way. The team eventually settled on documentary-style bookends that combine narration, archival footage, and recreated Betacam footage, which Kerstein described as bringing the film "full circle" and thus allowing the information to be an effective part of the film's storytelling. The cameo was Sondheim's last film appearance before his death on November 26, 2021.
"Green Green Dress" One of the film's more controversial cuts was the removal of the "Green Green Dress" musical number. In the stage version, the song is a duet between Jonathan and Susan singing about their love for one another by way of the green dress that Susan wears, whereas in the film it plays as an R&B cover performed by Joshua Henry over a scene of the two making love. The song was filmed as a fully choreographed number, but Miranda found that it slowed the pace of the film. Though reluctant to cut it, he felt it was necessary to remove it as it was the only song where no story occurs. Miranda did not want to completely lose the song, hence the presence of the cover, and Garfield and Shipp's version was included in the end credits and on the soundtrack. Margaret Hall, writing for
TheaterMania, observed that most of the songs in the film are presented as
diegetic music, a part of the world of the film, whereas "Green Green Dress" is one of the few numbers that is non-diegetic, where the characters do not necessarily know they are singing. While the final cut does include non-diegetic numbers such as "No More" and "Swimming", unlike those songs "Green Green Dress" does not offer new information about the characters singing it, nor does it offer much more insight into Jonathan and Susan's relationship than what is already presented. One of the film's major plot elements is that Jonathan is so focused on his career he is unable to stay on the same page as Susan, which is achieved by Susan not getting a solo for the majority of the film: one of her duets with Jonathan, "Therapy", instead becomes a diegetic performance by Jonathan and Karessa that contrasts with the couple's real-life argument. Removing "Green Green Dress" serves to finalize this disconnect, with Susan never singing a solo on a song until "Come to Your Senses", and in this case it is purely in Jonathan's head. Hall concluded that removing "Green Green Dress" was an example of one of the many changes to
Tick, Tick... Boom! that showed the production team's ability to engage with film as a medium rather than produce a straightforward stage-to-screen adaptation. Sondheim had even invited Larson to observe rehearsals for the original Broadway production of
Into the Woods in 1987. • The
Superbia Playwrights Horizons workshop, produced by Ira Weitzman and directed by
R. J. Cutler, actually took place on December 19, 1988. • Although the film depicts Larson grappling with writing the
Superbia song "Come to Your Senses," in reality, it was one of the earliest songs composed for the show and underwent few revisions. It was dropped from the show in 1987, a year before
Superbia was staged at Playwrights Horizons. The songs Larson most notably struggled with were "LCD Readout" and "Too Cold to Care" (originally titled "One of These Days"). Of the two, "LCD Readout" most closely fits the description of a song he was still rewriting prior to the workshop. This creative struggle is also reflected in Larson’s original performance of "Why," where rather than "Come to Your Senses," which was added to
Tick, Tick... Boom! posthumously, fragments of both "LCD Readout" and "Too Cold to Care" can be heard.
Music The
Tick, Tick... Boom! soundtrack was released for streaming/digital on November 12, 2021, by Masterworks Broadway on the same day as the film's theatrical release. A physical CD was released on December 3, 2021. All Jonathan Larson songs in the film were produced by
Alex Lacamoire,
Bill Sherman, and Kurt Crowley (who cameos in the film as the rehearsal pianist for
Superbia, Francis). The songs were mixed by
Greg Wells, and music supervised by
Steven Gizicki. "30/90" was released via streaming on October 5, 2021. "Louder Than Words" was also released as a single along with the album's pre-order date on October 22, 2021. Levenson and Miranda felt it was important for the film to play with the credit "score by Jonathan Larson" and so sourced many songs from the Library of Congress archives, including several that had never received an official release. This includes three songs from
Superbia not included in the soundtrack: "Ever After" (used to underscore the focus group meeting), "LCD Readout", and "Sextet". After considerable fan demand, the newly titled "Sextet Montage" was released as a single on February 4, 2022 in honor of what would have been Larson's 62nd birthday. A song called "Debtor Club" underscores the scene of Jonathan inviting various industry professionals to his reading. ==Release and reception==