Ryan Murphy Dishes on THE NORMAL HEART Movie

Ryan Murphy, creator of such television shows as Glee, American Horror Story, and The New Normal, is hard at work on bringing the Tony-winning play The Normal Heart to the big screen. He told the Hollywood Reporter: 'It scares me because I came of age sexually in the early 1980s, and I lost so many friends, and so it means a lot to me. I really want young people to know what it used to be like and how that disease is still with us in a very deadly, horrible way.'

He continued: 'Larry and I have been working on this script for a year and a half, and every page has some sock to the stomach emotionally. There's a three-page scene in there that I can barely read, let alone direct, which is about what it's like to be a caregiver when somebody's dying and throwing up and having diarrhea in your arms.'

Click here to read the full interview.

The Normal Heart, which closed on Broadway on July 10, won three 2011 Tony® Awards, including Best Revival of a Play, Best Featured Actress in a Play (Ellen Barkin) and Best Featured Actor in a Play (John Benjamin Hickey). The play was also honored as this season's Best Revival of a Play by the Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle and Drama League Awards and has received Drama Desk Awards for Best Ensemble and Best Direction of a Play, along with a Special Citation from the New York Drama Critics Circle.

The story of a city in denial, The Normal Heart unfolds like a real-life political thriller -- as a tight-knit group of friends refuses to let doctors, politicians and the press bury the truth of an unspoken epidemic behind a wall of silence. First produced by Joseph Papp at New York's Public Theater, the play was a critical sensation and a seminal moment in theater history. So ahead of its time was this play that many of the core issues it addresses - including gay marriage, the healthcare system and, of course, AIDS - are just as relevant today as they were when it first premiered.