Ridley Scott has explain the late in the day delay to Bee Gees biopic You Should Be Dancing, which now isn’t his next film.
When we spoke to Ridley Scott in early autumn about Gladiator II, the plan at that stage was he’d move straight into directing the biopic of the Bee Gees, You Should Be Dancing. The project has gone through directors such as Kenneth Branagh and John Carney in the past, and it felt like a minor miracle it’d finally got some traction.
Then, on the eve of Gladiator II’s release, a change of plan. No longer was You Should Be Dancing be going before cameras early in 2025 as planned. Scott has switched his attention to The Dog Stars, a film he’s set to shoot in the north of Venice with his Gladiator II lead, Paul Mescal.
Why, then, the change? Well, speaking to Kermode & Mayo’s Take, Scott revealed that he was planning to make the Bee Gees film, and then Paramount – the studio backing it – tried to change a few things.
45 minutes into the latest episode, he said that “I was right up to the threshold of Bee Gees, and the studio changed the footprint. I didn’t like it.”
Pushed for a bit more detail by peerless interviewer Simon Mayo, Sir Ridley explained that “they didn’t like the deal, so I stepped away. I said ‘be warned, I’ve got another one ready’”.
Paramount didn’t seem to sort its deal out quickly enough, and now Ridley Scott is working with 20th Century Studios again instead.
He’s now already recced The Dog Stars, and he plans to be shooting that by April. It doesn’t mean that the Bee Gees film is off his slate, and instead he offered that You Could Be Dancing “comes in September”. Presumably meaning he shoots that after Dog Star and assuming he and Paramount see eye to eye on the deal. Given that Sir Ridley has many films he’s juggling on his slate, it’d be a brave person who bets on that September start date…
