Ringo Starr Reveals The Beatles Turned Down a 1976 Reunion Over a Shark

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Ringo Starr says The Beatles turned down about $250 million to reunite because, quote, “the opening act was a guy fighting a shark.”

The spoiled could-have-been-reunion happened in 1976, six years after they had broken up. According to Ringo, they were offered the equivalent of about $250 million (in today’s money), and they considered the offer and were open to a reunion but they, “decided not to do it because the opening act was a guy [fighting] a shark. So we thought no.”

It’s a crazy story but it sounds like it really happened too, in an old article from 1976 in “People” magazine, a promoter named Bill Sargent made the offer and when they turned him down, he work on his next project set to have Australian diver, Wally Gibbins, “fight to the death with a 14-foot, 2,500-pound killer shark in a lagoon off Western Samoa.

The death match never happened though, the promoter died suddenly after a heart-attack, but not before protest of cruelty surrounded the event.

[h/t dailymail]