Four Beatles biopics get release date, full cast announced

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Sony Pictures has lifted the lid on its long-awaited Beatles movie biopic, revealing that director Sam Mendes will be making four films — one for each band member — with the entries set to hit theatres in April 2028.

“We’re not just making one film about The Beatles — we’re making four,” Mendes said, according to Variety. “Perhaps this is a chance to understand them a little more deeply.”

Mendes, who announced the news at CinemaCon in Las Vegas this week, also unveiled the cast of the upcoming films, with Gladiator II stars Paul Mescal and Joseph Quinn set to play Paul McCartney and George Harrison, respectively, Barry Keoghan taking on Ringo Starr and Babygirl breakout star Harris Dickinson tapped to portray John Lennon. 

“The Beatles changed my understanding of music,” Mendes told the crowd at the annual gathering of theatre operators. “I’ve been trying to make a movie about them for years.”

Mendes, who directed the James Bond films Skyfall (2012) and Spectre (2015), said that he settled on the idea of doing four separate movies because The Beatles’ “story was too big for one film” and pivoting to a TV series wasn’t an idea he wanted to pursue.

“There had to be a way to tell the epic story for a new generation … I can assure you there is still plenty left to explore and I think we found a way to do that,” he said.

Officially titled The Beatles – A Four-Film Cinematic Event, Mendes called the quartet of films the “first bingeable theatrical experience” of its kind.

The four actors were also on hand to announce the film, quoting a line from Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, “It’s wonderful to be here, it’s certainly a thrill, you’re such a lovely audience, we’d like to take you home with us.”

“We need big cinematic events to get people out of their houses,” Mendes said, adding that the movies will offer fans of the Fab Four “a chance to understand them more deeply.”

The films will chart the quartet’s rise from ambitious musicians growing up in Liverpool to their global chart-topping success, with the official logline reading: “Each man has his own story, but together they are legendary.”

“You have to match the boldness of the idea with a bold release strategy,” Sony studio boss Tom Rothman told The Hollywood Reporter last year about the project. “There hasn’t been an enterprise like this before, and you can’t think about it in traditional releasing terms.”

Last year the band’s Apple Corps. Ltd., which represents the interests of McCartney, Starr and the families of Lennon and Harrison, announced that Mendes had been hired to tell the band’s life story on the big screen.

“I’m honoured to be telling the story of the greatest rock band of all time, and excited to challenge the notion of what constitutes a trip to the movies,” Mendes said in a February 2024 statement.

Producer Pippa Harris said that getting both The Beatles and Apple Corps to sign off on the idea was “an immense privilege.”

“We intend this to be a uniquely thrilling, and epic cinematic experience: four films, told from four different perspectives which tell a single story about the most celebrated band of all time,” she said.

Of course, musical biopics can mean big box office. In recent years, films centring on Elton John, Elvis Presley, Bob Marley and Queen have all proven to be a success with critics and audiences.

Rothman said that for films to succeed in the marketplace the stories have to be “culturally seismic.”

“Sam’s daring, large-scale idea is that and then some,” he said.

Combining Mendes’ vision “with the music and the stories of four young men who changed the world, will rock audiences all over the globe,” Rothman added.

mdaniell@postmedia.com