Ryan Gosling to produce Busby Berkeley biopic, may star

Having recently portrayed a getaway driver, a bank robber, a loose-cannon cop and an expat gangster, it’s only logical that Ryan Gosling’s next role could be … Busby Berkeley?

The star of “Drive” and “The Place Beyond the Pines” is set to produce and possibly star in a biopic about Berkeley, the famous Hollywood choreographer and director of musicals, according to the Hollywood Reporter.

Warner Bros. has optioned Jeffrey Spivak’s biography “Buzz: The Life and Art of Busby Berkeley” for the film, with “Drive” producer Marc Platt also on board.

Gosling, who recently wrapped his writing and directing debut, “How to Catch a Monster” (which Platt is also producing), could helm the Berkeley film as well. No writer is attached to the project.

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Berkeley, a Broadway dance director in the 1920s, revolutionized the Hollywood musical with films such as “42nd Street,” “Footlight Parade” and “Gold Diggers of 1933,” all of which were released by Warner Bros. in 1933.

His dizzying dance numbers employed scores of showgirls, often photographed from above in eye-popping kaleidoscopic patterns emphasizing bare female legs. Times film critic Kenneth Turan once described the effect as “the equivalent of taking a mind-altering drug before you enter the theater.”

Berkeley also began directing films in 1933 and worked throughout the ‘40s and ‘50s.

Platt is no stranger to musicals either: He produced the Broadway hit “Wicked” and is working on Disney’s adaptation of the stage musical “Into the Woods,” slated for release in December.

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