Sam Mendes’ four Beatles biopics: What we know so far
Back in February, with the world still reeling from the release of one last original song by The Beatles three months earlier, Sony Pictures dropped the biggest cinematic announcement fans of the Fab Four could ever hope for. A biopic charting the band’s career was in the works at long last. Actually, no. One biopic for each member of the band’s Beatles career was in the works. Four movies, one each for John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr.
It was almost too much to take in. Countless fictional screen narratives have skirted around the fabled story of The Beatles’ rise and rise to the unrivalled pinnacle of pop music. We’ve had the origin stories Backbeat and Nowhere Boy, commendable in their own right, not least for portrayals of the young John Lennon by Ian Hart and Aaron Taylor-Johnson, respectively. The satires and pastiches, from Eric Idle’s legendary mockumentary on fictional spoof The Rutles, to Tom Hanks’ one-hit Wonders in That Thing You Do!. And the fans’ perspective of Beatlemania in I Wanna Hold Your Hand.
The less said about Richard Curtis’ 2019 fantasy Yesterday, the better. Likewise for the BBC’s Freudian teleplay Lennon Naked, starring Christopher Eccleston. The list could go on ad infinitum.
But never before have we seen a fully-fledged dramatisation of the band themselves in all their glory, scripting their entire decade together at the top of the rock and roll tree. And, Sony explained in their press statement, The Beatles themselves, McCartney, Ringo Starr and the executors of Lennon and Harrison’s estates Yoko Ono and Olivia Harrison, had “have granted full life story and music rights” for the project. Another first. Beatles company Apple Corps is even involved in the production.
So, what’s the big idea?
The band’s stance on official Beatles films has clearly changed over time, as McCartney, in particular, is becoming increasingly nostalgic towards his former band with age, it seems. Back in the 1980s, he chastised filmmaking great John Hughes for an inventive sequence in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off that made prominent use of the band’s version of ‘Twist and Shout’. Then, 1995’s Anthology project was carefully supervised by the surviving band members and Ono.
More recently, though, suspicions towards Beatles films seem to have abated. McCartney, unfortunately, came to certain licensing agreements with Curtis for his cinematic stain on the group’s legacy, including their trademark “dropped-T” font for Yesterday’s poster and title credits. And Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson was given relatively free rein over the production of his eight-hour documentary series Get Back.
We might have expected to see Jackson tapped again for Sony’s biopics, especially after he was enlisted to direct the video for ‘Now and Then’ in summer 2023. Yet it’s American Beauty and Skyfall director Sam Mendes who’s got the nod for these four movies. We don’t yet know how much of an avid Beatles fan Mendes is, although he’d struggle to match Jackson’s lifelong devotion to the band.
Nevertheless, Mendes says he’s “honoured” to be helming this enormous undertaking and has apparently come up with his own vision for how The Beatles story will be told on the big screen. Sony claims that the “daring, large-scale idea” of four separate films was Mendes’ brainchild. The James Bond director is already signed on to direct the lot. It was his production company that pitched the idea to Sony, whose CEO Tony Vinciquerra, in turn, negotiated a deal with Apple Corps.
The plan is to present “a single story” from “four different perspectives”, meaning we’ll likely see certain scenes repeated from the angle of each Beatle. Whether Apple and the band members themselves will allow for the unreliable or conflicting narratives that naturally fall within the creative scope of this intriguing proposition is another matter. In any case, Sony also promises to play around with conventional expectations for the “release cadence” of film franchises, so we could have the chance to compare each viewpoint within the Fab Four side-by-side in the cinema.
And who’s playing each Beatle?
As far as casting goes, there’s still nothing officially confirmed for these Beatles biopics. However, in June 2024, Vogue leaked a report that actors had already been decided on for the four lead roles. We know that Mendes and his longtime collaborators Pippa Harris and Julie Pastor have already started working on pre-production, despite no confirmation on a screenwriter as yet.
According to Vogue, these actors are rising young English stars Harris Dickinson and Charlie Rowe as John Lennon and George Harrison, Normal People and Gladiator II actor Paul Mescal as Paul McCartney, and Saltburn’s Barry Keoghan as Ringo Starr.
Starr has since confirmed that Keoghan will portray him. In an interview with Entertainment Tonight, Starr was asked for his thoughts on the Irish star bringing his life to the big screen. In response, he stated, “Well, I think it’s great. I believe he’s somewhere taking drum lessons, and I hope not too many.”
Furthermore, Mescal has also admitted that he would “love to be involved” with Mendes’ biopics. However, he caveated this by saying there is currently “nothing set in stone” but doesn’t acknowledge whether talks have taken place.
In another interview with Entertainment Tonight, Mescal said of his possible participation, “It would be an incredible story to be attached too, Sam Mendes is attached to direct. It truly would be a dream come true.”
While talking to Dazed, Dickinson refused to deny speculation linking him with the role of Lennon, stating, “There’s nothing I can say about that; it might not be true, it might be, I don’t know… there’s a speculation culture.”
However, according to reports from The Sun and InSneider, Rowe is no longer set to portray Harrison, and Stranger Things star Joseph Quinn will instead play the guitarist.
Although Keoghan, Mescal, Dickinson and Quinn are in the frame to become the Fab Four, it’s believed that none of the actors have signed off on the project at this stage. Therefore, it’s possible that scheduling conflicts or contractual disputes lead to a change of personnel.
When will we know more about the biopics?
The release dates of all four movies are already pencilled in for 2027, and shooting is set to take place in 2025. This schedule suggests we should start to see the first images and reports from the production process coming out at some point in 2026, within 12 months of the premieres, as we’ve seen with the Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown this year.
At the same time, no artist in the history of music can compare with The Beatles in terms of legacy and fanbase. The buzz around these Beatles biopics will be off the scale compared with films about Dylan, Taylor Swift or any other major music phenomenon out there. And so, we’re bound to see Mendes, McCartney, Starr and the film’s prospective cast peppered with questions about the project wherever they go during the next three years.
It’s hard to tell how soon Sony will feel it’s the moment to drip-feed more details to the public. But before the Fab Four become stars of the screen, we’ll just have to do something in between.
