Paramount Sets Release Plan For Robbie Williams’ Musical Film ‘Better Man’ By Michael Gracey

EXCLUSIVE: Buoyed by the overperformance of music-driven films Bob Marley: One Love and Mean Girls, Paramount Pictures has slotted Better Man for an exclusive qualifying release on December 25, followed by a wide theatrical release on January 17 in the heat of awards season. The film is an original musical by The Greatest Showman director Michael Gracey, based on the life and music of singer Robbie Williams.

Paramount earlier this month made a $25 million commitment for North American rights to the film, one of the largest indie film rights deals in years. The studio believes it has a winner — it leaned into Bob Marley and the film has so far grossed north of $123M worldwide on a $70 million budget. The challenge on Better Man will come in the marketing: North America is about the only place on the planet where Williams is not a megastar singer, even though he spends most of his time in the U.S. There is an opportunity for America and Canada to discover the music of a singer who had a Harry Styles-like boy band career launch, and then became a huge star on his own.

Deadline broke the story about Better Man when it was a package at Berlin 2021, when CAA Media Finance arranged the financing and repped domestic distribution rights, with Thorsten Schumacher at Rocket Science handled international sales and sold out every territory.

Gracey wrote the script with first-time screenwriters Oliver Cole and Simon Gleeson. The film tells the story of Williams’ ascent, exploring the experiences that made him who he is, and the demons he battled both on and off the stage as he became a huge star on the back of hits like Angels. It’s a very original exercise in storytelling, much different from the usual music biopic.

Paul Currie, Gracey, Coco Xiaolu Ma, Jules Daly and Craig McMahon produced. Pic was majority financed by Sina Studios and Facing East, and filmed on location in Victoria, Australia and at Docklands Studios with support of the Victorian government and VicScreen and Screen Australia’s Producer Offset Program.

Williams first became famous at 16 as a singer in the boy-band sensation Take That, but really hit stride as a solo artist. It happened fast, with 11 out of 12 of his studio albums charting No. 1 in the UK, and six of them among the top 100 biggest-selling albums there. His tours are instant sellouts and he made the Guinness Book for selling 1.6 million tickets for a tour in a day. He has long been a provocative, outsized global personality, except stateside. At least not yet.