"I was initially drawn into the Brian Epstein story as a young business student in the Wharton business school," explains Vivek Tiwary . "[I was] looking for the business stories of the Beatles and wanting to know how he got them a record deal when no label wanted them and how he convinced Ed Sullivan to book them when a British band had never made an impact on the United States, how he came up with the suits and the haircuts."
What began as a business school passion with the Beatles' manager became something of an obsession for the theater producer, whose credits include such Broadway success stories as the Tony Award-winning A Raisin in the Sun and the Green Day rock opera, American Idiot.
"But what inspired me about the Brian Epstein story ," he continues, "was uncovering all of the personal stories. He was Jewish at a time of pervasive anti-Semitism, homosexual at a time when it was literally a felony in the United Kingdom, and he was from Liverpool, which, was a port town with no cultural significance prior to the Beatles."
In 2013, Tiwary's decades-long fascination with Epstein manifested itself in the form of The Fifth Beatle, the writer's graphic novel debut illustrated by cartoonists Andrew C. Robinson and Kyle Baker, which would go on to win the Harvey Awards and an Eisner. Shortly after the comic's release, Tiwary announced a film deal.
Even more impressively, Tiwary had managed to score the rights to several Beatles songs – an unprecedented feat for a film about the Fab Four. But the writer is quick to add that the graphic novel was more than just a stepping stone to a film version.
"I don't see it as adapting the graphic novel into a film," Tiwary explains. "Really, we're expanding the graphic novel. The film gives us an opportunity to delve deeper into certain issues – two in particular. The story of Pete Best, the band's first drummer, who Brian has to fire, is not really dealt with in the graphic novel. And Brian's relationship with his father, while it's touched on in the graphic novel, it's a much bigger part of the film."
At the recent Fest for Beatles Fans, Tiwary read several pages from the film's first draft to a sold out Chicago crowd. Below, you'll find an exclusive preview of those pages, along with the corresponding events as found in the graphic novel version.
Co-produced with Simon Cowell's Syco Entertainment, the film is set to shoot in 2016. At this early stage, planned songs include such fan favorites as "Come Together," "Yesterday," "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away," "Strawberry Fields" and "A Hard Day's Night."
Copyright 2015 Tiwary Entertainment Group
