Beyond the Sea (film) Golden Globe nomination. Rather than providing a straightforward biography, the film weaves fantasy sequences with scenes containing somewhat fictionalized accounts of events in Darin's life, and throughout it, the adult singer interacts with his younger self. It chronicles his determination to rise from his working class roots as Walden Robert Cassotto, a frail Bronx boy plagued by multiple bouts of rheumatic fever, and become a singer more famous than Frank Sinatra. To achieve that goal, he forms a band and struggles to find gigs at any nightclub that will hire him. His agent gets Darin a recording contract with Atlantic
Beyond the Sea (film) came from foreign production companies, Spacey performed six songs at the November 2003 American Film Market. Lions Gate Entertainment quickly picked up the distribution duties and Spacey found enough investors from England and Germany to continue to move forward on production. In addition, Spacey declined to be paid for his work as actor, director, co-writer and producer on "Beyond the Sea". A portion of the $25 million budget came from his own Trigger Street Productions. Producer Arthur Friedman, who had shepherded the biopic since 1987, commented that he and Spacey experienced creative differences during pre-production. Friedman remarked that he was