By After Freddie Mercury and Elton John, the next big musical biopic will follow the Bee Gees. The Gibb brothers – Maurice, Robin and Barry – will be the subjects of a film put together by Bohemian Rhapsody producer Graham King, according to Deadline.
The idea of an mid-70s rock cinematic universe has been floated before now, especially since the Queen biopic's director, Dexter Fletcher, mentioned that he originally wanted Rami Malek's Freddie Mercury to appear briefly in Rocketman. If it did happen, it would be a very busy place, populated with the stars of other legacy-burnishing film projects for the Beatles (Yesterday), Bruce Springsteen (Blinded by the Light), Motley Crüe (The Dirt) and ABBA, again (Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again), plus the upcoming biopics of Elvis, David Bowie, Bob Marley and Aretha Franklin.
To be fair, there's a lot of interesting stuff to explore with the Bee Gees. While frozen in their 1977 Saturday Night Fever jumpsuits in the popular imagination, they evolved together through many incarnations. There's their upbringing in Chorlton, near Manchester; their emigration to Australia after Robin's flair for arson caught up with him; then their psychedelic phase, which produced songs with titles like 'I Have Decided To Join the Airforce' and 'The Earnest Of Being George'. Then they broke up, got back together again, conquered the world with disco, and then got dumped unceremoniously from the charts by 1981 in the aftermath of the 'Disco Sucks' backlash.
The intensity and strangeness of the Bee Gees, as well as their resolutely terrible style moves, means they've remained slightly naff for many. But it also means they're ripe for the kind of re-evaluation afforded to contemporaries like Chic. Plus, there are so many weird episodes from the Bee Gees' lives that they might need a 10-episode, David Lynch-helmed miniseries, rather that just two hours in the cinema. For example, in 1968 Robin was involved in the Hither Green railways disaster, in which 49 people died. Not long after, he got trapped for several days in a ski lodge after an avalanche. He and his brothers once made an absolutely appalling musical film based on Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. And Robin, again, once talked about making his own film about a man who tries to blow up Trafalgar Square with a bomb wrapped in underpants.
But there's also the sensation that none of this is entirely the point of this moment's rock biopic boom. The legacies of Elton, Queen and the Beatles weren't exactly in danger of being forgotten, but they were nowhere near the centre of pop culture.
A blockbuster fixes that. And, if you get it right, there's money to be made. Traditionally, legacy acts have brought windfalls with advances in tech. First, there was the switch from vinyl to cassette, then from cassette to CD. Each time, the music industry made a shedload of cash as people re-bought stuff they already owned. Streaming has dammed that particular, er, stream. These films attempt to winkle more money out of existing real estate in the same way, but at the same time redefine the image of an ageing (or dead) star. Elton's not 72, oh no – he's Taron Egerton!
There's also the chance to completely ignore an artist's inconvenient fluctuations in popularity and quality control, or to simply rewrite vast swathes of history into a more digestible and stylised narrative for newcomers. Star Wars, Star Trek, Batman, Joker, Spider-Man, Ghostbusters and dozens of other big franchises have rebooted themselves; now the great and good of pop are getting in on it too.
Whether the Bee Gees film ends up being more of a Rocketman or an unintentional tribute to Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story remains to be seen. But don't bet on the tunes stopping any time soon.
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