Drummers often get overlooked in the history of music, but Dennis Wilson, drummer for the Beach Boys and brother of bandmates Carl and Brian, is getting his own biopic, simply titled The Drummer.

Variety reports that the film now has a lead actor in the form of Aaron Eckhart, who’s onboard to play Dennis. He’s apparently been in negotiations for the film for several months, and after signing on for I Frankenstein recently he’s decided to also commit to this.

However seeing as Dennis is generally seen as the dark horse of the Beach Boys, the real question is why he’s worth making a movie about. The film will focus on the last six years of his life, until his death in 1983. That time saw him stepping into the limelight, releasing a solo album, Pacific Ocean Blue in 1977 (Eckhart will apparently record his own versions of songs from that record). However he was also battling with drug and alcohol problems and eventually drowned whilst swimming drunk.

It doesn’t seem therefore that the movie will touch too much on Wilson’s late 60s involvement with Charles Manson, which some saying this is what eventually led to the murder of Roman Polanski’s pregnant wife, Sharon Tate. They may find a way of tucking that in, but as Dennis always hated mention of his involvement with Manson, and two of his children are involved in the film as producers, they may just ignore that aspect of his life completely.

Randy Miller (Bottle Shock) will direct, with shooting scheduled to begin next year, probably in the early summer.

General movie news courtesy of Movie Muser