In late November 2019, a few months before COVID-19 hit Europe, the producers of a biopic about the Beatles’ manager Brian Epstein threw a party at BAFTA’s central London headquarters. The event was ostensibly for investors and “people who had shown an interest [in investing],” producer Perry Trevers told Variety last summer. While tribute act The Upbeat Beatles played, guests – described by one attendee as “a very eclectic mix” that included manicurists, fashion bloggers and writers – danced, posed for photos and nibbled on canapés.
“The drink was flowing everywhere and everybody got very, very silly,” sculptor Steve Bicknell, who attended that night and subsequently sunk $12,400 into the movie, told Variety.
The evening, described variously by guests as a “gala” and a “party,” was primarily a sales pitch, with the film’s producers — among them Trevers, CEO of U.K. production company Studio Pow — on hand to hawk the project. They even hired a cameraman, at a cost of $4,900, to film the evening and whip up a two-and-a-half-minute promotional video to lure further investors. In the video, Trevers tells the crowd: “We genuinely have the team and the cast and it’s a story which has been a long time in the telling.”
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What neither the producer nor his investors could have anticipated on that brisk November evening was how much longer it would take before the story of “fifth Beatle” Brian Epstein ever reached audiences. The film, titled “Midas Man,” was originally set to be released in the first quarter of 2021 “with revenues following shortly after,” according to an early investment document seen by Variety. But as the project hit multiple delays, burning through three directors and millions of pounds of investors’ money — almost doubling its initial $10 million budget — it was repeatedly pushed back and struggled to find distributors in major territories including the U.S. and China. It’s yet more proof that even in the indie film world, big egos, small budgets and high stakes can result in disrupting even the most surefire hit.
“Midas Man” was finally released in the U.K. last fall in a streaming-only deal with Prime Video. Although a long-awaited North American distribution deal was struck with Briarcliff Entertainment last June — which included a commitment to show the film in over 800 theaters — a U.S. theatrical release date doesn’t seem to be in the offing. Instead, it appears “Midas Man” will be available to purchase on streaming starting Jan. 21. “The picture is currently unset,” Briarcliff’s John Spinello told Variety in October, adding that “we will advise when we do set our plans.” Whether the private investors, which number in the many hundreds according to a source, will see much of a return on their investment remains to be seen, although Trevers was optimistic last summer, saying: “We’re very confident our investors getting a return on their money.” But even before the BAFTA fundraiser, the film was already making waves.
Epstein has long been considered an icon among Beatles fans as the man who turned the Fab Four into a global phenomenon. But his story — which includes copious sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll — was largely unknown to the wider world. Gay and Jewish at a time when it could be difficult to be either, he achieved dizzying success at a young age, managing acts including Gerry and the Pacemakers and Cilla Black as well as the Beatles, before dying of an overdose at the age of 32. It was a story ripe for the big screen, especially if producers could wrangle the rights to the Beatles catalogue, turning the film into a jukebox biopic along the lines of “Rocket Man” or “Bohemian Rhapsody.”
Studio Pow were first approached with a script for a Brian Epstein biopic early in 2019 by an independent creative team, who’d been told the studio could help them raise money. At that point Pow had only released one feature, the 2017 indie comedy “Funny Cow” starring Maxine Peak, but after looking at the Epstein project, the company moved quickly. Although they had intimated to the original creative team (who declined to comment for this story) they could get around $4.3 million from China or the UAE, within weeks an email blast went out via a mailing list from a now defunct website called filmsleuth.co.uk, which apparently specialized in “entertainment & film business investment opportunities,” urging “sophisticated investors and high net worth individuals” to invest and warning that the first round of funding was “almost closed.” The email also promised “exceptional forecasts exceeding 70% and above” and perks including “set visits, red carpet premiers etc.” Another, similar email went out two months later via a website called investor-square.com, promising a “128% return over 24 months.”
The investment memorandum accompanying the filmsleuth.co.uk news blast, seen by Variety, claimed that Dominic Cooper was attached to play Epstein and Dennis Quaid would play Ed Sullivan, both “subject to contract,” although no offers had been formalized at that time (reps for Cooper and Quaid did not respond to Variety’s requests for comment on how far negotiations progressed). But relations between Studio Pow and the creative team soon broke down, partly due to the bullishness with which Studio Pow had begun approaching investors according to a source familiar with the negotiations. (Trevers disputes this, saying the relationship fell apart because the creative team misled him about the film’s other backers.)
As Epstein was a public figure, anyone could make a film about the man nicknamed the “fifth Beatle” — there was little to stop Trevers pursuing his own biopic about the music manager. He soon commissioned entertainment journalist Brigit Grant and Jonathan Wakeham, a freelance writer with few screenwriting credits at that time, to put together a script.
By the end of 2019, fundraising had kicked into high gear. In addition to the BAFTA party in November, there was a subsequent event at the Soho Hotel in central London in which around a hundred “potential investors” were invited to hear the film’s producers pitch the movie. Among them was Beatles tour guide Richard Porter, who ultimately declined to invest. That event was also filmed. In the video, Twickenham Studios’ managing director Andrew Boswell told the audience: “This is the sort of movie that will still be playing to generation after generation and you could have a piece of that.” (Although Twickenham Studios chairman Sunny Vohra and managing partner Jeremy Rainbird were originally billed as executive producers on the film, Vohra told Variety they had exited the project during production and Twickenham was not involved in the finished movie.)
With money now trickling in, the next step was attaching a director. In early 2020 “Lords of Chaos” helmer Jonas Akerlund signed on to direct the project. Part of Akerlund’s appeal was his relationship with Paul McCartney — he had directed McCartney’s “Live Kisses” DVD — and there was hope he might be able to help swing rights to the music. But very soon, says a source who was working on the project, there was “tension” in the air between Akerlund and Studio Pow co-founder Kevin Proctor, who was producing the film.
As the film inched towards production, things deteriorated further, according to two sources who worked on “Midas Man.” The bills, allegedly out of sync with the film’s $10 million budget, began piling up, including, that source claimed, $122,000 for the Beatles’ shoes. “They had no idea what level [the film’s budget was],” the source said of Akerlund’s team. “They just thought it was a bottomless pit.” (Another source close to Akerlund disputed this, saying he had no control over the budget.) Perry and Studio Pow’s head of investment, David Poole, declined to comment on claims of Akerlund’s excessive spending, citing confidentiality clauses.
Casting was equally fraught, with the producers allegedly having unrealistic expectations of the kind of actors they could secure. Among the names bandied about were Florence Pugh — then already co-starring in 2021 Marvel blockbuster “Black Widow” opposite Scarlett Johansson — for Liverpudlian singer Cilla Black while Jack Black and Ricky Gervais were considered for cameos (Trevers confirmed Pugh was in consideration for the role but said he did not recall Black or Gervais being mentioned). A source described the process as “tortuous.” Eventually “The Queen’s Gambit” breakout Jacob Fortune-Lloyd — who shares an agent with Dominic Cooper — was cast as Epstein.
By the time principal photography started the situation with Akerlund was becoming increasingly difficult, according to a source, who says the director clashed with Proctor, the main producer on the project. One of the sources also says Akerlund, who is best known for shooting music videos for acts including Madonna, U2 and Fergie, was taking the film, envisaged as an edgy but not raunchy biopic for general audiences, in a more adult direction involving “rough” sex scenes. “What Jonas does is he’s extreme, like ‘Lords of Chaos’ is extreme,” says the source, who worked closely with Akerlund on “Midas Man.” “I don’t think he quite understood that this movie was a different kind of movie which would be more universal.”
According to one cast member, the production had also run out of money. So when Studio Pow allegedly discovered Akerlund had been editing his Netflix crime drama “Clark” in his spare time, contravening an exclusivity clause on “Midas Man,” the breach was used as an excuse to part ways with the director and temporarily shut down production. Two sources said Akerlund walked away with his full fee, which was close to $1.2 million.
Trevers declined to comment on what transpired between Studio Pow and Akerlund, citing NDAs, while a source close to Akerlund strongly denied all the claims regarding the director, including that he had worked on “Clark” while shooting “Midas Man” and that he was paid almost $1.2 million. “Jonas Akerlund has no comment other than the accusations are both false and inaccurate and will defend himself fully in the event of any disparaging comments made regarding his conduct,” his rep said in a statement to Variety.
In a 2022 interview with Variety to promote “Clark,” some ten months after he parted ways with “Midas Man,” Akerlund said he couldn’t talk about the discord behind the scenes due to NDAs, but added: ”The project did not turn out the way I thought. That’s all I can really say.”
Following Akerlund’s departure in the fall of 2021, Studio Pow announced that “Vinyl” director Sara Sugarman would take over the project and principal photography would resume within weeks. The only problem was there was still no money, three sources tell Variety. It took a further three months before Sugarman was able to start work on the production, flying to L.A. to shoot a scene with Jay Leno, who plays Ed Sullivan in the film. Meanwhile many of cast were left in limbo as they sought to understand whether their services would be needed. A number eventually exited the project, including Lukas Gage, who had been cast as Epstein’s lover Tex Ellington, and Rosie Day, who had been set to play Cilla Black. (Day was eventually replaced by Darci Shaw and Gage by Ed Speelers.) Trevers admitted to Variety that “pay or play” clauses in the actors’ contracts had “affected the budget” of the film but, in a follow-up email with Variety, strongly denied the film had run out of money in the fall and winter of 2021, calling the claim “demonstrably false” and saying the delay in production was to enable Sugarman to prep.
Despite the chaos unfolding on set, on Nov. 14 — just a few days before Sugarman’s signing was announced — another email blast about “Midas Man,” from another (now-defunct) website called traffordplazauk.com went out to potential investors with the subject line: “Invest in the biggest movie of 2022.” Inside, it trilled: “Shooting began in Liverpool on the 11 October, reducing speculation for anyone that has been entertaining the idea of investing in this movie.”
Production finally restarted with Sugarman at the helm in January 2022. But in the background, relations were again breaking down between Studio Pow and their director. The studio had brought in a new producer, Tom Reeve, and head of production, Reeve’s son Jordan, who, according to a source, wanted to make the film on as lean a budget as possible. “She wanted to make the film her way, they wanted to make it their way and they couldn’t agree,” says another source. (Sugarman declined to speak to Variety for this story.)
Sugarman soon became the second director to exit the project — having been paid, according to the source, “an absolute fortune” — and Joe Stephenson was brought on to finish it. With only around 15% of usable footage in the can, Stephenson, whose previous work included a documentary about Ian McKellan and a low-budget horror film starring Eddie Izzard, completed the picture for about $6 million. (Trevers said the $6 million figure was “not accurate” but declined to confirm how much it cost to finish the movie.) Joe “did a remarkable job in really difficult circumstances,” a source says. The total budget, by that point, had ballooned past $18 million, excluding tax credits.
Directors weren’t the only headache. One of the main selling points of the movie was the Beatles soundtrack. In yet another (undated) investor video, this time filmed for a cost of $3,700 at tony members club The Groucho, publicist Mark Borkowski, who was also an executive producer on “Midas Man,” spoke about why the film was a good investment. “You’ve got a story and a backdrop of some wonderful music that fits into that story,” he said. “This is an opportunity to make an unforgettable film that’s going to make a lot of money but also win lots of awards and plaudits.”
The only problem was that neither Apple Corps (the multimedia holding company for the Beatles’ music as opposed to the tech firm) nor Sony Music Publishing, who own the publishing rights to the Beatles’ catalogue, were playing ball. Despite repeated entreaties, Apple wouldn’t license the masters while Sony declined to license the publishing rights. Yet multiple sources told Variety that Studio Pow were convinced they would get the group’s music. So much so, Poole admitted to Variety they shot two endings for “Midas Man,” one with “All You Need is Love” and one without.
One source on the production recalled asking producer Kevin Proctor how things were going with the music rights. Proctor allegedly replied: “We’ve got the keys to the kingdom. We were in the Apple [Corp] shop earlier on and we were looking at all the tunes on the shelves and we’re really nearly there, we’ve nearly got the key.” (Proctor did not respond to multiple emails and social media messages.)
In fact, the only Beatles songs featured are covers from their earliest albums. Trevers acknowledged that failure to secure anything by Lennon and McCartney had an impact on the film’s prospects, with one major streamer turning it down for that reason. Ultimately it was low-profile distributor Briarcliff, which has developed a reputation for taking on projects no one else will touch such as Donald Trump biopic “The Apprentice,” that agreed to take on the film. (Poole told Variety a “better” North American deal had fallen apart 18 months earlier.)
Some investors also seemed to be under the impression that “Midas Man” had licensed the Beatles’ music in some form. Steve Bicknell, the investor who attended the BAFTA fundraising event, told Variety before the film’s U.K. release: “Pow are paying a fortune for the original music to license it…I think it was a very heavy part of the budget, licensing the music from Apple Corp. I believe it was quite a big six-figure sum.”
Another investor Variety spoke to last year was stunned to hear Lennon and McCartney’s music would not appear in the film, saying it was “one of the core reasons why I thought the film could be successful.” A third investor Variety spoke to also said: “I would be expecting there to be some Beatles music in that movie.”
David Poole denied telling investors music written by the Beatles would appear in the film. “We never ever said that there would be. We said we were trying,” he told Variety. “We always thought we might get one or two.”
The investors’ confusion speaks to a larger shadow looming over the project: what the private individuals — who Studio Pow claim are all “high net worth clients” — were told before they sunk money into the project. High-net worth, according to Studio Pow, means someone earning more than $227,000 per year or owning assets worth over $533,000. But one investor admitted to Variety they had, over the course of production, contacted Studio Pow in what they described as a “desperate phone call” to inquire when they might see a return after encountering financial difficulties.
The three investors Variety spoke to, whose investments ranged from $12,000 to $120,000, are all to varying extent Beatles fans. (Bicknell teared up when recalling Lennon’s death, saying: “I don’t think I’ve ever got over it actually.”) Their fandom does not appear to be a coincidence. Opportunities to invest in the film were plastered across social media, including on Beatles forums, Google Groups, Instagram and Facebook by a third-party marketing agency called SKS Media that repeatedly described Studio Pow as its client and tagged the studio on Instagram. Among the benefits promised in both the social media posts and investor memorandums seen by Variety were set visits, private screenings and exclusive merchandise.
Studio Pow also advertised for investors in the magazine Money Week and hired a stall at the London Investment Show. Unusually for a production outfit, the studio boasts an in-house sales team, currently made up of four people, whose job it is to persuade private individuals to invest in their projects. Ostensibly the minimum buy-in is set at $12,000.
David Poole is adamant that the sales team is always upfront about the risks as well as upsides of investing. “[Getting people to invest] would be the easiest thing in the world if you told people things that weren’t true,” he told Variety, adding that the team record all their calls.
But in one case, Variety heard that an investor was promised that their son, a musician, could play Paul McCartney in “Midas Man.” The investor told Variety they had “made it totally clear” to Studio Pow their investment was not dependent on their son getting a part in the film but after an audition with Perry the young hopeful was told he had won the role. However, after spending months learning how to play bass left-handed, the musician found out the part had been re-cast with actor Blake Richardson. Trevers told Variety the investor’s son was subsequently offered a smaller non-speaking role.
Last summer, Variety spent more than two hours with Trevers and Poole at their central London office discussing the film’s challenges as well as the promises the Studio Pow team had made to its many investors. (Poole said there were “a couple of hundred” investors although a source told Variety they believe the real number is likely over 400.)
Both men denied fishing for investors on social media, with Trevers, who came into the film industry from a background in publishing, claiming he had never heard of SKS Media, suggesting they might have been incorrectly claiming to represent Studio Pow. “I don’t know about that,” Poole interrupted Trevers. “But I know a few things have got out into advertising as far as how we market. If we’ve ever seen it [on social media], we’ve pulled it straight away.” Trevers promised to investigate the company’s association with SKS Media internally. In a follow-up email with Trevers a few months later, he said SKS Media “were never employed directly by Studio Pow to raise money on its behalf” and again promised to investigate whether they had been employed by an intermediary. (In January SKS Media told Variety they had been hired to promote the project by a third party.)
The two men also initially denied promising investors roles in return for financial support before Poole admitted an investor’s son had auditioned for a role. “We’ve had investors whose children we have helped,” Trevers acknowledged. “We brought them in [for work experience]. We have one lad who wanted to get into film and he spent the summer with us and he got on the Disney course out in L.A. I mean, you know, we help a lot of people.” Both he and Poole denied their “help” was conditional on investment.
But for many of the investors, it seems, Studio Pow failed to deliver on even the most meager, Kickstarter-like incentives. None of the three Variety spoke to in early July had seen the film, despite the fact it was finished. (Variety was given the opportunity to watch it months before its digital release at Studio Pow’s London office after speaking to Trevers and Poole). At that time Poole acknowledged that only 10 investors had been invited to a cast and crew screening. “Those 10 investors pretty much paid for half the film,” he explained. (There has since been a screening for investors including Steve Bicknell in London which took place last fall.)
Of the many people involved in “Midas Man” that Variety spoke to for this story the word “nightmare” came up more than once. Proctor has since left the studio while Fortune-Lloyd, who was also an executive producer on the project, was also said to have been burned by the experience (the actor declined to speak to Variety for this story but in an interview with The Times of London he discussed the difficulty of having multiple directors on the project, saying that “to lose momentum was hard.”) “It was just a total, fucking mess,” said one person involved in the production. “I swear to God I was just like, ‘I wish I’d never heard the words ‘Midas Man’ ever.’”
It remains unclear whether investors have recouped any of the money they put in. Recent records at U.K. business registrar Companies House show that the latest accounts for Studio Pow (Epstein) Ltd — the legal entity holding the copyright for the film — are almost three months overdue. On Dec. 31, the company was officially warned it would be struck off the register within two months “unless cause is shown to the contrary” — a measure taken against companies who do not file their accounts on time, which can result in the mandatory closure of a company and transfer of all its assets to the Crown.
At Studio Pow, however, the sales team have already moved on. “We are opening up Round 1 investments exclusively to our base before the public launch this weekend,” a Studio Pow newsletter, sent out last summer, urged investors interested in their upcoming film “For Holly at Christmas.” “With high demand anticipated, spots are expected to fill up quickly.”