Garber, O’Hare, Spinella, Join Sean Penn in Milk Film

Tony Award winners Denis O’Hare and Stephen Spinella and multiple Tony nominee Victor Garber have joined fellow Broadway veteran Sean Penn in the upcoming film Milk, tentatively scheduled to be released in 2009, according to EW.com. The film’s cast also includes Josh Brolin, Emile Hirsch, James Franco, and Diego Luna.

Directed by Gus Van Sant, the film will focus on the life –and eventual death — of Harvey Milk (to be played by Penn), who became the first openly gay elected official in America in San Francisco in 1977. He was assassinated the following year by fellow city supervisor Dan White.

Van Sant’s previous directorial credits include Good Will Hunting, for which he received an Academy Award nomination, My Own Private Idaho, Elephant, and Paranoid Park.