Bee Gees Biopic To Be Directed By Kenneth Branagh

The long-awaited Bee Gees biopic will be directed by actor/director Kenneth Branagh via Paramount Pictures. Surviving Bee Gee Barry Gibb, “is very involved in the narrative film, and will be executive producer.” Noted screenwriter Ben Elton is writing “the current draft of the script.” There's been no release date announced for the still-untitled film.

Deadline reported, “Paramount got life rights to the Gibb family estate, and the rights to use their classic songs in a movie that could very well follow the template of the Best Picture-nominated blockbuster Bohemian Rhapsody, because the songs are so well crafted, with exhilarating falsettos.”

Shortly before his 2012 death, Robin Gibb shed light on the group's beginnings: “Well, we started writing songs when we were eight-years-old and started natural harmonies. Nobody ever taught us anything, so we did it out of fun — for nothing else. We started in Manchester just copying what we heard on the radio and imagining what their new single would be like and as young as eight or nine we were actually imagining and composing music.” (OC: 15 . . . and composing music)

Not long before Maurice Gibb‘s 2003 death, he and brother Barry Gibb recalled the moment during the 1975 sessions for their Main Course album ushered in the groundbreaking moment that led to renewed superstardom: “(Maurice Gibb): We were completing 'Nights On Broadway.' We had just done most of the vocal tracks and most of the harmonies and stuff and usually at the end you have some ad-libs, or some kind of thing to take it away from the original melody and have some fun. (Barry Gibb): So (producer) Arif (Mardin) wanted us to go out and sort of sing — or try to scream like Paul McCartney would sometime scream in falsetto. (Maurice Gibb): So Barry said, ‘I’ll have a go.’ So we went out there and he did the ‘blamin' it alls’ ad lib on ‘Nights On Broadway.'”