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’ 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.
Here’s everything to know about the upcoming Beatles biopics:
When will the biopics be released?
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.
Who will play the Fab Four?
Being such a high-profile project, the films have been surrounded by a flurry of casting rumors. Though nothing has been officially confirmed yet, two castings seem pretty solid: Gladiator director Ridley Scott let slip that Paul Mescal, who has been rumored to play Paul McCartney, will be joining the film. “Paul is actually stacked up, doing the Beatles next. So I may have to let him go,” the director said in a recent interview.
Ringo Starr himself also seemed to hint that one bit of casting gossip might actually be true. When asked whether he’d heard that Saltburn star Barry Keoghan might be playing him, he told Entertainment Tonight, “Well, I think it’s great. I think he’s somewhere taking drum lessons, and I hope not too many.”
Barry Keoghan and Ringo Starr
As for the remaining two Beatles, Triangle of Sadness star Harris Dickinson may play the late John Lennon, and while Rocketman’s Charlie Rowe was rumored to be playing the late George Harrison, his reps confirmed to Metro UK that the news wasn’t true.
Both Mescal and Harrison addressed their potential castings, with Mescal telling GQ, "I would love to be involved, but there’s nothing set in stone," and Dickinson demurring to Dazed, "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."
Has there been a Beatles biopic before?
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 big couple of years for musical biopics in general; 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; and 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, Beyoncé’s Renaissance film and Wicked: Part One. 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.
