Sam Mendes is making four Beatles movies — and all four will be released theatrically in April 2028.
The filmmaker, who announced the news at CinemaCon, also confirmed the casting: Paul Mescal is playing Paul McCartney, Joseph Quinn will portray George Harrison, Barry Keoghan will star as Ringo Starr and Harris Dickinson will put his spin on John Lennon.
Mendes promised that the multi-part biopic will be the “first binge-able theatrical experience.”
“We need big cinematic events to get people out of the house,” Mendes told theater owners on Monday at Sony’s presentation.
The director, whose credits include “American Beauty” and “Skyfall,” had dreamed of bringing the Fab Four to screens. But he didn’t want to make a mini-series and he worried that “the story was too huge to fit into a single movie.” But he came up with a plan to tell the story of “the greatest band in history” from the perspective of each of its members, to try to capture their improbable journey from Liverpool to the center of global culture.
“It’s a chance to understand them more deeply,” Mendes promised.
The film is also the first narrative feature to be granted music rights to The Beatles extensive catalog of hits such as…”Strawberry Fields,” “Let It Be,” “I am the Walrus,” and “Yellow Submarine.”
Mendes said that principal photography on the four films will take a year. Tom Rothman, the Sony Pictures chief who oversaw production on a certain James Cameron sci-fi epic back when he was at Fox, joked that Mendes’ film was giving him “‘Avatar flashbacks.”
More to come…
