US producer David Permut will make a film on the birth of the Beatles, Variety reports.

Permut's picture is to be based on A Life In The Day, a Tony Gittelson script about the life of Brian Epstein. Epstein, born in Liverpool in 1934, was the man who believed the Beatles would make it huge and managed them from 1961-1967.

He convinced EMI to sign the mop-topped young group and saw them start to soar before he died of a drug overdose at 32.

Epstein, who sold records from his father's store in Liverpool, heard the Beatles on his lunch break at the Cavern Club.

He became a huge fan who doggedly pursued a big record deal for the future Fab Four.

"Everybody turned down the band, even though Brian promised they would become bigger than Elvis, and he finally got George Martin at EMI to change his mind and give them an audition," said Permut.

Permut recently produced Youth In Revolt, an upcoming Dimension Films comedy starring Michael Cera of Juno fame.

'Occupational hazard'

Meanwhile, Sir Paul McCartney has described rumours that he had died, which surfaced more than 40 years ago, as "ridiculous" and an "occupational hazard" for a member of one of the world's biggest bands.

The conspiracy theory began in October 1969, when a Detroit-based DJ claimed that the three other Beatles - Ringo Starr, John Lennon and George Harrison - had recruited a lookalike replacement for Sir Paul after he died in 1966.

The DJ argued that because the man "posing" as McCartney on the cover of the Beatles' 1969 album Abbey Road had bare feet meant it represented a corpse.

Also, the number plate on a car in the photograph was LMW 28IF - denoting Sir Paul's age, if he had lived.

"It was funny really," Sir Paul, 67, told MOJO music magazine in an interview.

"But ridiculous. It's an occupational hazard: people make up a story and then you find yourself having to deal with this fictitious stuff.

"I think the worst thing that happened was that I could see people sort of looking at me more closely: 'Were his ears always like that?"'

He said that he had bare feet in the famous record sleeve image because he had kicked off his sandals, and that the car parked in the background was "random".