Project Detail

Genius The Movie

Synopsis

George Best was one of the greatest footballers who ever lived. But he was so much more than that. Although the football pitch was his arena, Best was essentially a pop star - young, stylish, strikingly beautiful, possessed of a creative confidence that bordered on arrogance, and worshipped by young men and women alike. Like The Beatles and The Rolling Stones.
This film is simultaneously a celebration of a genius and an exploration of the demons that brought him down. We all know how these biopics traditionally work: in this case a talented but innocent young man from the backstreets of a divided but still pre-Troubles Belfast, becomes a star. But his time at the top is agonizingly short: a family history of alcoholism doesn’t help, in those pre-drug Sixties everyone wanted to buy him a drink, and before he was thirty, he was a washed up drunk.
But we’re taking the Benjamin Button approach here. No-one wants to go out on a downer, with the end card telling us how many hundreds of thousands lined the streets of his home town to bid him farewell, along with the millions watching on live television.

Details

Year: 2026
Type of film: Features
Running time: 120 min
Format: 35mm
Director
Producer: Paula Crickard, James Anderson, Peter Dunphy
Executive Producer: Shaw Brown
Screenwriter: Colin Bateman

Genre

Northern Irish Sport Drama

Production Status

Pre-production

Production Company

Shadowline Media

James Anderson
First Floor
36 Albemarle Street
London
W1S 4JE

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