Bee Gees biopic in the works with Kenneth Branagh directing

There’s a Bee Gees biopic in the works, and Deadline reports that Kenneth Branagh has been tapped to direct. Barry Gibb, the last surviving Bee Gees member (and Gibb brother), who was a producer on HBO’s 2020 Bee Gees documentary, will be an executive producer on the film and, according to Deadline, will be “very involved in the narrative film.”

No casting news yet, but writing the screenplay is Ben Elton, who co-created classic punk-era UK sitcom The Young Ones, and also wrote for Blackadder and, recently, wrote the screenplay for 2019 film All is True. That was directed by Branagh (who also starred as William Shakespeare). The film has been in the works since 2019, when Paramount acquired the rights to the Bee Gees story and rights to use their music.

The Bee Gees documentary skipped over some sections of the Bee Gees’ career, like starring in 1978’s ill-fated Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band movie musical. With Gibb as a producer here, it seems unlikely that this biopic will delve into that, but it would be interesting to see actors playing the Bee Bees playing, ostensibly, The Beatles, for a majorly meta moment.  Most likely we’ll get something that resembles Bohemian Rhapsody or Rocketman.

Branagh, who was last seen in Christopher Nolan’s Tenet, will next be seen reprising his role as detective Hercule Poirot in Agatha Christie’s Death on the Nile, which he also directed. That film was supposed to be out last year and is now set for a September 2021 release.