Dark Horse’s ‘The Fifth Beatle Heads’ to the Silver Screen

Thanks to Terry Hoknes at www.hoknescomics.com for this story.

It was announced today that Peyton Reed (Bring It On
, The Break-Up ) has signed on to direct ‘The Fifth Beatle: The Brian Epstein Story’, the film adaptation of the recently released New York Times best-selling graphic novel (JUL130016V, $19.99) chronicling the final years of The Beatles’ founder and manager, Brian Epstein. The film is being produced by Academy Award winning producer, Bruce Cohen (American Beauty, Silver Linings Playbook) and Tony Award winning producer, Vivek J. Tiwary (“A Raisin in the Sun,” Green Day’s ‘American Idiot’) who authored the graphic novel. This marks the first ever feature film about The Beatles to secure music rights to their songs granting unprecedented access to the Lennon/McCartney music catalog. The screenplay is written by Tiwary, the project is slated to begin production in 2014 and the casting of the Brian Epstein role will begin now that Reed is on board.

‘The Fifth Beatle’ recounts the untold true story of Epstein, the brilliant visionary who discovered The Beatles and helped guide the band to international stardom as their manager, securing their first record deal at a time when no one else was interested, and successfully bringing them to the world stage with a scale and scope no music impresario had ever attempted. Epstein’s boast—“The Beatles will be bigger than Elvis!”— seemed absurd in 1961, but proved humbly prophetic by 1967. When he died at the age of 32, he was an extremely successful artist manager and entertainment impresario, but a painfully lonely young man

“From the moment I read Vivek’s graphic novel, I knew I wanted to be the person to bring Brian’s story to the big screen,” explains Reed. “I’m a lifelong Beatles fan, obviously, but it’s Brian’s fascinating life that really blew me away and drew me to this project. He’s the ultimate outsider who, against all odds, became the ultimate insider. He was responsible for shepherding the most popular artistic expression of “love” in the history of modern culture, and yet he wasn’t allowed to express his own love during that time.”

Tiwary and Cohen added, “Peyton’s films are incredibly fun and entertaining, while still underscoring a serious empathy for the struggle for accomplishment, belonging, and the need to love and be loved… In brief, Peyton is simply the perfect director to take the Brian Epstein story to the big screen. We’re honored and excited to be working with him!”

The graphic novel comes in several formats, the regular edition for $17.99, The Collectors Edition for $44.99, or the Limited Edition for $89.99 at Things from Another World or the regular edition for $17.39, The Collectors Edition for $35.81, and the Limited Edition for $63.81 on Amazon