George Clooney, whom President Donald Trump mocked as a “second rate” star on Monday, has broken a Broadway box office record with his new play Good Night and Good Luck. The play, marking Clooney’s Broadway debut, earned $3,305,240 in seven previews last week, setting a new record for the highest-grossing nonmusical play in a single week. The record had already been broken earlier this month by Othello, starring Denzel Washington and Jake Gyllenhaal, whichmade 2,824,493for eight performances. Good Night and Good Luck is adapted from the 2005 movie of the same name, which was cowritten by Clooney and also starred him, and portrays the historic TV face off between journalist Edward R. Murrow and U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy. Clooney, whose father was a journalist, spoke out about the importance of press freedom in an interview promoting the play on 60 Minuteson Sunday, mentioning Trump’s recent lawsuits against ABC and CBS. Following the interview, the president penned an angry Truth Social post, fuming, “Why would the now highly discredited 60 Minutes be doing a total ‘puff piece’ on George Clooney, a second rate movie ‘star,’ and failed political pundit."
