The trailer for the new Midas Man has finally dropped, just weeks before the movie releases on Prime Video.
Jacob Fortune-Lloyd transforms into the man behind The Beatles, Brian Epstein in the new biopic.
In the first look, Jacob, who plays Epstein, dedicates his life and soul to get the group to number one in America.
The movie follows The Beatles quick rise to stardom, with the help of their manager Epstein.
It peels back the curtain on the triumphs, heartbreaks, and secrets of the man who changed the face of music forever.
The trailer for the new Midas Man has finally dropped, just weeks before the movie releases on Prime Video (Jacob Fortune-Lloyd pictured)
The movie follows The Beatles quick rise to stardom, with the help of their manager Epstein
Within months, dressed at Epstein’s behest in dark mohair suits, their hair cut by his personal barber, and having learned their trademark straight-backed bow from him, the Beatles would conquer the world.
And as their visionary and utterly devoted manager, he would become the fifth member of the Fab Four.
Alongside Jacob, Emily Watson stars as Epstein’s mother Queenie and Eddie Marsan as his father Harry.
The Beatles themselves are intentionally played by little known actors since, as Trevor Beattie points out: ‘This is a film abut Brian Epstein, not the band he managed.’
Eddie Izzard gives a cameo performance as Allan Williams the Scouse music promoter forever known as the man who gave away the Beatles.
American chat show legend Jay Leno makes a guest appearance as Ed Sullivan, sixties king of American TV.
It was the band’s February 1964 headline performance on his show which cracked America, a pivotal moment in Midas Man.
That seismic set is still described by Rolling Stone magazine as ‘the night the Beatles invented fun as we know it’.
Within only months of being under Brian Epstein wing (Pictured right), the band was dressing elegant in a black suits – a look they became renowned for (Pictured left: Jacob Fortune-Lloyd as Brian Epstein in Midas Man)
Jacob Fortune-Lloyd (left) transforms into the man behind The Beatles, Brian Epstein in the new biopic
In the first look, Jacob, who plays Epstein, dedicates his life and soul to get the group to number one in America
It peels back the curtain on the triumphs, heartbreaks, and secrets of the man who changed the face of music forever
Within months, dressed at Epstein’s behest in dark mohair suits, their hair cut by his personal barber, and having learned their trademark straight-backed bow from him, the Beatles would conquer the world
And as their visionary and utterly devoted manager, he would become the fifth member of the Fab Four
Alongside Jacob, Emily Watson stars as Epstein’s mother Queenie and Eddie Marsan as his father Harry (pictured)
Eddie Marsan (right) plays Epstein’s father Harry
But we see them first in the Cavern Club, the Mathew Street, Liverpool, cellar where they played 292 gigs between 1961 and 1963.
Although the club still exists today it’s actually a rebuild of the real thing which was demolished in 1973.
The £250,000 replica created for Midas Man is a faithful copy of the original, built on a Merseyside industrial estate following weeks of research in Liverpool City Council’s planning archives.
‘I hope Midas Man honours Brian Epstein,’ says Jacob Fortune-Lloyd, ‘but I also hope it makes people love him because he was very loveable.
‘You’d think that, being a manager, he would be all about the money and the legals but he’d been an actor himself, he was creative, a real cultural magpie.
‘He had a fastidious elegance about him, a natural gentlemanliness, he spoke beautifully, dressed beautifully.
‘Studying him for this role, I came to think it was an armour in which to face the world, and he had good reason to need that. How far he went, how far the Beatles went, came at a terrible personal cost.
‘Brian was such a complex person, extraordinarily ambitious but also an introvert. He wanted to be in the public gaze while knowing that for him it was a very dangerous place.
‘I think about all the things he could have done if he’d lived longer, how he would have expanded his universe, and ours.’
The group sporting all smiles as they pose with their manager Brian Epstein in the 60s
The Beatle talking at the premiere of ‘Hard Day’s night” in London on July 4 in 1964
The danger to which he refers is the fact that Epstein was gay in an era when homosexuality was still illegal. In Midas Man we see his bleak sexual encounters with strangers, and learn that he was arrested for soliciting; and assaulted, robbed and blackmailed by those who knew his secret.
‘But don’t make the mistake of thinking this is a gay tragedy,’ says Trevor Beattie. ‘Brian Epstein’s appetite for risk, his ability to manage it in all elements of his life, explains a lot about his professional success. He had a lot on his plate. Managing the Beatles was the easy part.’
In the movie we meet him as he starts to build his music empire, drawing on his family’s retail experience, his eye for design, and the theatrical instincts which had earned him entry to RADA alongside Susannah York, Albert Finney and Peter O’Toole.
Signing up as manager of the Beatles he tells John Lennon he wants a 25pc cut of the band’s earnings in return for all that he could offer. ‘Is that standard?’ Lennon asks. ‘It’s fair,’ Epstein replies, promising: ‘I will look after you. Like family, only better. No secrets from each other.’
He does keep one secret however, of how the band’s music was rebuffed by record label after record label, until his meeting with Parlophone, and producer George Martin’s life-changing invitation to ‘our place in North London, just by the Abbey Road.’
Midas Man secured rare permission to shoot in Studio 2 at Abbey Road Studios where the Beatles recorded almost 200 songs between 1962-1970. ‘
Midas Man is streaming on Prime Video 30 October
