Academy Award-winning director Ron Howard has signed on to make an authorised documentary about The Beatles‘ touring years. The documentary will focus on the period between 1960-1966, when Beatlemania was at its peak.
The as-yet-untitled project will include interviews with Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Yoko Ono and Olivia Harrison, all of whom have given their support to the project along with the Fab Four’s music label Apple Corps.
“What’s so compelling to me is the perspective that we have now, the chance to really understand the impact that they had on the world,” Howard told Rolling Stone. “That six-year period is such a dramatic transformation in terms of global culture and these remarkable four individuals, who were both geniuses and also entirely relatable. That duality is something that is going to be very interesting to explore.”
The movie will tell the story of the band members’ early days in Liverpool’s Cavern Club, playing in Germany, their arrival in the United States including their Ed Sullivan show appearance and will also including footage of their last public concert in San Francisco in 1966.
“Beatlemania was not just a phenomenon. It was the catalyst for a cultural shift that would alter the way people around the world viewed and consumed popular culture,” the filmmakers said in a statement. “This film will seek to explain what it was about that particular moment in time that allowed this cultural pivot point to occur.”
The documentary is scheduled for a tentative late-2015 release. It will be Ron Howard’s second music documentary, after 2013’s Jay-Z festival film Made in America.
