Beyond the Sea (2004) on Netflix
PG-1320041h 58mBiographyDramaMusic
Walden Robert Cassotto, a frail Bronx kid with rheumatic fever, wants to become a singer more famous than Frank Sinatra. He forms a band and takes whatever nightclub bookings he can get.
- Netflix3.2/5
- IMDb6.7/1016,142 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes43%
Trailer
Plot summary
Bobby Darin is making a film about his own life, and the grown singer trades lines with the boy he once was. That boy is Walden Robert Cassotto, a frail kid in the Bronx, learning music and dance from his mom while rheumatic fever wears him down. He forms a band and plays wherever a club will have him until an agent lands him a recording contract. "Splish Splash" turns him into a teen idol, but he would rather be an entertainer than a pop star, so he takes up big band singing. Cast opposite Sandra Dee in a movie, he falls in love, courts her with songs, and the two elope.
Cast
- William Ullrichas Little Bobby
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Beyond the Sea (2004)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Barry Levinson discussed the biopic with Johnny Depp as Bobby Darin, Drew Barrymore as Sandra Dee, Bette Midler as Darin's birth mother Nina and Bruno Kirby as Nina's husband Charlie Mafia, before he left the project and Warner Bros. lost the music licensing rights to the Darin estate.
- Paramount's deal to back the film fell apart when the studio told Kevin Spacey that he was too old for the role and instead wanted Leonardo DiCaprio.
- With principal photography weeks away, MGM dropped out as distributor and main financier over scheduling conflicts, and to accumulate the film's $25 million budget Kevin Spacey performed six songs at the November 2003 American Film Market.
- In Writers Guild arbitration the Guild justified credit to Lewis Colick, who wrote the first draft of The Bobby Darin Story in 1987, and to Kevin Spacey; actor-writer Jeffrey Meek, who believed he deserved credit, was paid $85,000 of a promised $125,000 to settle his claim.
- Kevin Spacey declined to be paid for his work as actor, director, co-writer and producer on Beyond the Sea, and a portion of the film's $25 million budget came from his own Trigger Street Productions.
