The Beach Boys deserve their own biopic, a la The Doors, Johnny Cash, Ray Charles or Jerry Lee Lewis. Years ago, the California pop-music pioneers were progressing on a deal that would have brought their story to the silver screen … but plans stalled. Now, a new screenwriter has been hired, getting the Beach Boys biopic bouncing once again.
WGA nominee Deirdre O’Connor has been hired by Fox 2000 to pen a fresh treatment on the Beach Boys’ story, according to Deadline. The screenwriter, who worked on Lifetime’s Five project as well as the TV series The Electric Company, will work in conjunction with Beach Boys biopic director Michael Sucsy to refine their approach to the project and keep it on track.
The trade site says that O’Connor will take a different approach from the one Susannah Grant pitched to Fox 2000 back in 2010 … a pitch that earned Grant a reported $2 million. That fil would have treated the music of the Beach Boys as a backdrop for a narrative, similar to the way the music of ABBA back a storyline in Mamma Mia!. I wonder if that means Fox 2000 is ditching that idea and going with a straight-up biopic, because the Beach Boys certainly have more than enough drama in their history to sustain a traditional life-story formula. And how different will this be from Love & Mercy, which casts Paul Dano as Brian Wilson in an “unconventional” biopic, according to reports.
Either way, it will be great to hear the Beach Boys’ beloved tunes backing an on-screen story if and when O’Connor and Sucsy get their version of the story into theaters in the near future.
