A statue of The Beatles manager, Brian Epstein, has been given planning permission by Liverpool council.

The statue of the famous manager, who also worked with acts including Cilla Black and Gerry and The Pacemakers, will be positioned near his family’s former record shop in Whitechapel.

Epstein discovered the Beatles in 1961 after seeing them perform at The Cavern Club. He died at the age of 32 in 1967 following an accidental overdose.

Jane Robbins, one of the statue’s sculptors and Paul McCartney’s cousin, told The BBC “[Paul] said a few rude words but we were at a family party and I had the photos of the final clay on my phone.

Proposals for a public statue of Brian Epstein have received planning permissionhttps://t.co/FCHioDCyjN

— Liverpool Echo (@LivEchonews) February 17, 2022

“I showed him the photograph and he said ‘bleep, bleep, bleep Janie, that’s dead good like’. He spent several minutes looking at it and he was delighted.”

“I don’t know if there was an actual a tear in his eye but he was very moved to see the clay and that, I think, speaks volumes.

“When you get a likeness, people do often cry because that person isn’t around anymore.”
A date for the statue’s installation is expected in the coming months.

Meanwhile, Sara Sugarman, director of films like Vinyl and Confessions Of A Teenage Drama Queen, was hired to helm an upcoming biopic of Epstein last year.

The project, titled Midas Man, was placed on hiatus last year after it was announced original director Jonas Akerlund was “taking a break” from the film.

As reported by Deadline, Akerlund was replaced by Sugarman, with hopes of it re-entering production as soon as possible.

In a statement issued to the publication, Akerlund said: “I regret that things haven’t turned out as we had planned on Midas Man. I wish Jacob [Fortune-Lloyd] and the team the best with the film.”

Jacob Fortune-Lloyd, who starred in Wolf Hall and The Queen’s Gambit, will play Epstein in the biopic, which will chart the entrepreneur’s huge influence on pop music within the 1960s.

The cast also includes Emily Watson (Chernobyl), Eddie Marsan (The World’s End), Rosie Day (Outlander) and Bill Milner (X-Men: First Class). It’s yet to be revealed who will play the Fab Four themselves.

Filming on the project started late last year in Liverpool.