The box office success of Bob Marley: One Love following this week's Valentine's Day release is prompting Paramount to get its long-gestating Bee Gees biopic moving a little more quickly than before. According to Deadline, the studio has now put the script in front of Ridley Scott, and the director is making a deal to tackle it as his next film.
While it's hard to imagine Scott needing anyone's approval for a job, the studio executives were apparently over the moon with the footage from his Gladiator sequel and eager to have him sign on. And for his part, Scott already has a Bee Gees connection, having once been developing a film called Castle Accident with the band's manager to star musical siblings Barry, Robin and Maurice Gibb that never came to fruition. But, assuming the biopic deal works out, now he'll get the chance to tell their story.
And what a story… The group enjoyed worldwide sales of more than 220 million records, cementing them as one of the biggest-selling groups of all time. While the brothers first began performing together in the late 1950s with folk and soft rock, their popularity mushroomed after they wrote songs for Saturday Night Fever that boosted the popularity of disco and led to one of the top-selling albums ever, winning five Grammys including Album of the Year.
Even though the soaring success made them world famous, rich and an indelible part of the ’70s zeitgeist, their position as the symbol of disco put them unexpectedly on their heels when there was an eventual backlash to the whole vibe. When Maurice Gibb died suddenly in January 2003 at the age of 53, the remaining brothers retired the group’s name after 45 years of work. They re-formed in 2009, but Robin died three years later at age 62 and that has left Barry to maintain the band’s legacy.
Paramount and producer Graham King have had the rights to a Bee Gees biopic since 2019, and has John Logan writing the script (another Scott connection, since he crafted the first Gladiator and Alien: Covenant for the director). Yet it has proved a tough one to crack, with Kenneth Branagh and John Carney on the list of those who were once involved. If Scott really does sign on, it could finally, actually get into production. And the rest of extensive list of potential projects will have to go back to waiting for their shot.
First, though, there's Gladiator 2 to get on screens, which is due out on 22 November. And at the pace he's working these days, Scott could already have made two other movies before it lands.