Ed Sheeran wants to make a big screen musical.
The 27-year-old is playing himself in Danny Boyle’s as-yet-untitled next film, his first significant role on the big screen.
And he told Associated Press: “I want to make one movie, like one movie musical… Something like that where songs dictate the film…
“I can’t see myself playing an Avenger, you know? I don’t really want to be an actor.”
Boyle’s film sees ex-EastEnders star Himesh Patel play a singer-songwriter who wakes up one day as the only person in the world who remembers The Beatles.
“Then I discover him and take him on tour,” Sheeran said. “Then he gets much, much bigger than me through doing stuff.”
He said of his previous roles: “With the Game Of Thrones thing, that was literally me popping in for a day and making a cameo… But this was like full days on set, like full 12-hour days.”
Sheeran, who has penned songs for Justin Bieber and Jessie Ware as well as his own hits, is the subject of a new film, for Apple Music, about his songwriting process.
“I’ve worked with lots of songwriters that have different processes. But for me it’s just verbal diarrhoea,” he said.
Out now! Go inside the process of @edsheeran‘s ‘÷’ in #Songwriter the film.Watch now, only on Apple Music: https://t.co/lqu21AymiI pic.twitter.com/6rwVgBDGLv
— Apple Music (@AppleMusic) August 28, 2018
“You just get it out and then move on to the next one. Whereas other songwriters that I write with will take a long time over one line and, ‘Is this the right thing to say, is this the right melody to say?’
“Whereas I’ve never really worried about that. I think you just get it out and move on to the next one. And one of them might be good.”
The Apple Music movie, directed by Sheeran’s cousin Murray Cummings, shows Sheeran working with a team to piece together the sounds, lyric ideas and melodies that would eventually become songs on his 2017 album Divide.