The film stars Andrew Garfield as Larson, alongside Robin de Jesús, Alexandra Shipp, Joshua Henry, Judith Light, and Vanessa Hudgens.

Jonathan has a party at home with friends, including his former roommate Michael, his girlfriend Susan, and fellow waiters Freddy and Carolyn ("Boho Days").

This troubles him, as his idol Stephen Sondheim told him the same at a composing workshop some years ago ("LCD Readout"), but he can't come up with anything, and he only has a week.

Jonathan's anxieties over the workshop and Michael and Susan's offers ("Johnny Can't Decide") are compounded when he learns from Carolyn that Freddy, who is HIV-positive, has been hospitalized ("Sunday").

He chooses to prioritize the workshop ("Sextet Montage"), which leads to trouble in his personal life: Susan, frustrated by Jonathan's indecisiveness and obsession with his career, breaks up with him ("Therapy"), and he angers Michael when he deliberately sabotages the focus group.

Rosa gives him a reality check that it will likely never be produced due to the content and production needs, so he must try again with a completely different show and hope something will stick, urging him to write about what he knows.

[8][5] The song "Sunday" features cameos from André De Shields, Bebe Neuwirth, Beth Malone, Brian Stokes Mitchell, Chita Rivera, Chuck Cooper, Howard McGillin, Joel Grey, Renée Elise Goldsberry, Phillipa Soo, Phylicia Rashad, and Bernadette Peters.

It also prominently features Adam Pascal, Daphne Rubin-Vega, and Wilson Jermaine Heredia as homeless bums: all three were original cast members of the Broadway production of Rent, which was also written by Larson.

[8] The musical theater workshop scene includes cameos by various established theater composers and lyricists as "aspiring composers and lyricists", including Alex Lacamoire, Amanda Green, Chad Beguelin, Jaime Lozano, Dave Malloy, Eisa Davis, Georgia Stitt, Grace McLean, Helen Park, Jason Robert Brown, Jeanine Tesori, Joe Iconis, Marc Shaiman, Matthew Sklar, Nick Blaemire, Quiara Alegría Hudes, Shaina Taub, Stephen Schwartz, Stephen Trask, screenwriter Steven Levenson, and Tom Kitt.

Boom!, and her wife Robyn Goodman, who co-produced the run and was friends with the real Larson, play Michelle and Gay respectively, Jonathan's neighbors who attend his party.

These mentions could be considered memorials; by the time this movie was filmed, Mazzie and Lindsay had died, and though Alexander was still alive, he had not had a professional career since pleading guilty to charges relating to child pornography.

[4] Following Larson's death, Leacock Hoffman and Robyn Goodman recruited playwright David Auburn to transform the solo piece into a three person musical.

[19] 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.

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.

[31] 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.

To simplify his performance, he would think "Crooked smile on an unmade bed" before cameras started rolling, which he felt was the key element of physicality he needed.

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.

[48] 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.

[43] 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.

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.

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.

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 idea to turn the Moondance Diner into a proscenium stage by having the front come down, and overexposing the footage to resemble a painting, especially with the transition to a pointillist look at the very end of the song.

[55] 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'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.

[4] However, Miranda, Weisblum, and Kerstein realized that, with the passage of time, there were more audience members unfamiliar with Larson who would need to get on the same page as the filmmakers about his "ticking clock".

[67] 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.

[76] The film was universally praised for its adaptation of the original musical, with Vulture's Jackson McHenry highlighting the expanded cast and depiction of the world of the show.

Jessica Derschowitz of Entertainment Weekly dubbed the film a "totem for the thrills and trials of making art, with all the sacrifices and empathy it requires", also praising it as a tribute to Larson.

"[82] Parade ranked it at number 36 on its list of the "67 Best Movie Musicals of All Time," calling it the "most invigorating snapshot of the all-consuming struggle of a creative since Brad Bird's layered masterpiece Ratatouille.