Ridley Scott will direct You Should Be Dancing, the biopic of the Bee Gees. But there’s Gladiator II to sort out first.
In a strange, roundabout way, the production schedule of the long-mooted Bee Gees biopic hinges on how good the incoming Gladiator II turns out to be. Ridley Scott has now apparently locked his final cut of his new movie, and the project he’s jumping onto straight afterwards is You Should Be Dancing. This is, as you’ve probably gleaned from the cunning headline, the planned biopic of the Bee Gees, which Scott had taken on after it went through the hands of the likes of John Carney and Kenneth Branagh.
The film is set to start shooting early in 2025, but the unknown here is whether Gladiator II will be at the level to warrant an Oscar run. The original film won the Best Picture Academy Award of course, although Ridley Scott was overlooked for the Best Director prize that year (his cupboard remains Oscar-less). Should Gladiator II get the recognition that’s expected, then Oscar campaigning will be taking up a fair amount of the bearded one’s time, and thus that’s going to potentially push back the start date on You Should Be Dancing.
Paramount is backing both projects, so presumably has built in some flexibility to do a bit of shuffling. Still, given that Ridley Scott appears to be going hell for leather when it comes to moving his films along, he’s likely to be rather keen to be back on a movie set sooner rather than later.
John Logan has penned the script for You Should Be Dancing, and we await casting news for the movie too. A late 2025 release could, if all goes to plan, see Ridley Scott back in the awards race again. But let’s see what happens with Gladiator II first…
