Are You Ready for Not One, But Four Beatles Biopics?
In case you haven’t heard, The Beatles are finally getting the proper musical biopic treatment, with not just one but four separate films detailing each of the Fab Fours’s lives, from Oscar-winning filmmaker Sam Mendes.
“I’m honored 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, who also directed American Beauty, 1917, and James Bond films Skyfall and Spectre said in a statement.
The four films will hit theaters in 2027, with Sony saying the release strategy will be “innovative and groundbreaking.” While three years seems far away, it’s not a ton of time to make four films—and rumors of the cast have already broken the internet.
According to the independent Hollywood newsletter The InSneider, the project is rumored to star four actors, all of whoe happen to be vying for the title of the Internet’s Boyfriend. Paul Mescal will reportedly play Paul McCartney, which is fitting beyond just the name match—the two also share a similar hairline, Irish background, and a certain leading man twinkle in the eye. Triangle of Sadness star Harris Dickinson will reportedly play the late John Lennon and Saltburn star (and Sabrina Carpenter’s rumored boyfriend) Barry Keoghan will reportedly play Ringo Starr. Rocketman’s Charlie Rowe was rumored to be playing the late George Harrison, but his reps confirmed to Metro UK that the news wasn’t true. So, the veracity of the rest of the casting rumors remains, for now, up in the air.
The Beatles made their own movies together (1964’s A Hard Day’s Night, 1965’s Help!, 1967’s Magical Mystery Tour, and 1968’s Yellow Submarine)—and have been the subject of numerous documentaries like Peter Jackson’s recent streaming hit Get Back and 1970’s Let It Be, which chronicled the group’s breakup (real fans will also recall 2007’s divisive Evan Rachel Wood-starring jukebox musical Across the Universe). This is the first time, however, that the original boy band and their respective estates and families have granted both full life rights and use of The Beatles’s musical catalog for the film (for a long time, they weren’t even on iTunes).
It’s been a huge couple of years for musical biopics; while each film’s quality is debatable, they certainly have been flooding the market. There was Baz Luhrmann’s Austin Butler-starring Elvis in 2022 (and its sister film, Priscilla, by Sofia Coppola the following year); Bob Marley: One Love, and the Amy Winehouse biopic Back to Black this year; the upcoming Bob Dylan film, A Complete Unknown (starring Timothée Chalamet) and a Linda Ronstadt biopic starring Selena Gomez; a forthcoming Michael Jackson feature from Training Day director Antoine Fuqua; a Ridley Scott film about the rise of the Bee Gees and a Martin Scorcese biopic about The Grateful Dead (and those are just the ones that are confirmed).
Audiences have also proved they like movies they can sing along to in theaters, with the massive success of concert films like Taylor Swift’s The Eras Tour and Beyoncé’s Renaissance film. Meanwhile, the Marvel Cinematic Universe has proven the appeal of interconnected film franchises. If f there’s one group that can still bring those trends and audiences from Boomers to Gen Z together (despite the long-running meme that they’re overrated), it’s perhaps The Beatles.