Oscar winner Ron Howard has been tapped to direct a featur documentary about The Beatles. However, the film — which will be made with the complete cooperation of the two surviving Beatles, Sir Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, plus John Lennon’s widow, Yoko Ono, and George Harrison’s widow, Olivia Harrison — will have a very specific focus.
It will concentrate on the period from 1960 to1966, when the “Fab Four” changed the face of contemporary pop music — and took first Europe, then the U.S. by storm, performing 166 concerts in 15 countries and 90 cities.
Howard and his team expect the film to be ready for release sometime in 2015.
The director was 10 years old — and still starring on “The Andy Griffith Show” — when he first saw The Beatles on “The Ed Sullivan Show.”
“I’d never thought about bands before, only Elvis,” Howard told the Deadline.com website. “These guys looked and sounded different, and were absolutely explosive to watch. … It was this flash of genius and uniqueness, but they were also relate-able. Seeing them on [Sullivan’s show] was right up there with the 1969 Apollo 11 moon landing, in terms of images from the television set that I’ll never forget.”
