It was announced that Peyton Reed has signed on to direct The Fifth Beatle, the film adaptation of the recently released New York Times best-selling graphic novel chronicling the final years of The Beatles’ founder and manager, Brian Epstein. The film is being produced by Academy Award winning producer, Bruce Cohen and Tony Award winning producer, Vivek J. Tiwary 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.

Reed’s big screen debut came in 2000 with the cheerleading sleeper hit, Bring It On. The film grossed $90 million worldwide, opening at number one and staying in the top 10 for seven weeks. Following the success of Bring It On, Reed was at the helm of 2003’s cult favorite Down With Love, starring Renée Zellweger and Ewan McGregor, and The Break-Up, starring Jennifer Aniston and Vince Vaughn, in 2006, which debuted at #1 and has grossed over $203 million globally. Most recently, in 2008, Reed directed Yes Man, starring Jim Carrey. The film opened number one at the box office, bringing in $18.3 million on opening weekend, and eventually grossing over $225 million worldwide.

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.

You can read our review of the graphic novel here.