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
- Producer
- Paula Crickard, James Anderson, Peter Dunphy
- Co-Producer
- Debbie Vandermeulen
- Executive Producer
- Shaw Brown
- Screenwriter
- Colin Bateman
Genre
Production status
Pre-production
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Last updated 6th February 2025
