Kenneth Branagh Will Direct Upcoming Bee Gees Biopic

New York, NY (Top40 Charts) Kenneth Branagh ("Thor," "Hamlet") has signed on to direct an upcoming biopic about The Bee Gees. The film comes from the producers of "Bohemian Rhapsody" and will follow a similar trajectory.

Ben Elton, who wrote the screenplay for Branagh's "All Is True," is on board to write the script. He is the bookwriter for "Love Never Dies," "We Will Rock You," "Tonight's the Night," and "The Beautiful Game."

The upcoming documentary comes from Paramount. The studio acquired the rights to use The Bee Gees' songs on film in 2019.

While Barry, Robin and Maurice Gibb 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 fueled the popularity of disco and led to one of the top-selling albums ever, earning them five Grammys including Album Of The Year.

A recent documentary about the Bee Gees, "How Can You Mend a Broken Heart," premiered on HBO in December of 2020.

Branagh trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London; in 2015 he succeeded Richard Attenborough as its president. He has been nominated for five Academy Awards and five Golden Globe Awards; he has won three BAFTAs and two Emmy Awards. He was appointed a Knight Bachelor in the 2012 Birthday Honours and knighted on 9 November 2012. He was made a Freeman of his native city of Belfast in January 2018. In 2020, he was listed at number 20 on The Irish Times list of Ireland's greatest film actors.
Branagh has both directed and starred in several film adaptations of William Shakespeare's plays, including Henry V (1989), Much Ado About Nothing (1993), Othello (1995), Hamlet (1996), Love's Labour's Lost (2000), and As You Like It (2006). He was nominated for Academy Awards for Best Actor and Best Director for Henry V and for Best Adapted Screenplay for Hamlet.