NY Comic-Con: Beatles Manager Getting Biopic From Broadway's Vivek J. Tiwary

Vivek J. Tiwary will write and produce a big-screen adaptation of his upcoming graphic novel The Fifth Beatle.

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The project will mark the first time a feature film about the band has ever secured rights to include Beatles songs. Tiwary has signed a deal with Sony/ATV, which controls the John Lennon/Paul McCartney music catalog, giving the writer unprecedented access to Beatles songs for the film.

The graphic novel chronicles the life of The Beatles little-known manager Brian Epstein. As McCartney has said, "If anyone was the fifth Beatle, it was Brian."

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The graphic novel -- which is scheduled to be published next year by M Press Books, a division of Dark Horse Comics -- is being drawn by artist Andrew Robinson (Star Wars, Batman), with additional contributions by Eisner and Harvey award-winning artist Kyle Baker (Plastic Man, Why I Hate Saturn).

Both Robinson and Tiwary will attend the upcoming New York Comic Con from Oct. 10-14 to present the graphic novel and meet fans. Artwork from the novel will be displayed exclusively online at www.thefifthbeatle.com.

Tiwary and Robinson will appear tonight on the panel A Celebration of Pop Music Comics at Jim Hanley’s Universe store. 

The graphic novel explores Epstein role as 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 died at the age of 32.

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"My interest in the Brian Epstein story began almost 20 years ago, when I decided that music management was the area of the entertainment industry that I first wanted to pursue,” said Vivek. "I had been a lifelong Beatles fan, so I thought that it made sense to study the management of the band that had written the rules of the modern music industry. What I unearthed after much research -- there is a paltry amount of information readily available on Brian, which is part of why I want to bring his story to the world -- was not just an inspirational business story and a blueprint for what I wanted to accomplish with my career, but also a very human story. This is a true labor of love, passion project for me.”

On Broadway, Vivek’s productions have won 25 Tony Awards from 44 Tony nominations. His credits include The Addams Family and American Idiot.

He is repped by David Alpert and Lawrence Mattis at Circle of Confusion.