Paul Mescal and Barry Keoghan confirmed to play Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr in Sam Mendes’s Fab Four biopics.
The Beatles - A Four-Film Cinematic Event, directed by Sam Mendes.
Harris Dickinson (John Lennon)
Paul Mescal (Paul McCartney)
Barry Keoghan (Ringo Starr)
Joseph Quinn (George Harrison)In theatres April 2028. #TheBeatlesFourFilmCinematicEvent pic.twitter.com/mREL0nPcfC
— Sony Pictures (@SonyPictures) April 1, 2025
At the end of Sony’s CinemaCon presentation on Monday night in the US (April 1 in the UK), director Sam Mendes took the stage to make a pair of blockbuster reveals for his four upcoming Beatles films.
After a year of speculation, Mendes has confirmed that the Fab Four will be portrayed by Harris Dickinson, Paul Mescal, Barry Keoghan and Joseph Quinn. Dickinson will play John Lennon, Mescal will play Paul McCartney, Keoghan will play Ringo Starr and Quinn will play George Harrison.
The film franchise is being titled The Beatles – A Four-Film Cinematic Event, and in a shocking announcement, Mendes revealed that all four films will arrive in April 2028, though not at the same time.
After director Sam Mendes announced Tuesday that he plans to make four separate movies about the Beatles, one from the perspective of every member of the most famous band in history, every actor with a serviceable Liverpool accent and the ability to carry a tune is burnishing their resumes and hoping to score an audition.
Mendes’ marathon will take its place alongside a gamut of recent Beatles releases, including the aforementioned Jackon epic, Danny Boyle’s cloying film, Yesterday, as well as two separate ‘Beatles in India’ documentaries since 2020. This is not to mention various other recent music biopics of, among others: Elvis, Bob Marley, Freddie Mercury, Leonard Bernstein, Elton John, Brian Wilson and NWA. There’s more in the works too, with Antoine Fuqua taking a swing at Michael Jackson, and Ridley Scott currently positioning a film about the Bee Gees.
Additionally, Mendes has confirmed that filming all four films will take over a year, but is confident for an April 2028 launch. According to Variety, Mendes’ decision to land on four films comes after years of toying with the idea of a mini-series but ultimately deciding against it, and that “the story was too huge to fit into a single movie.” Each of the four films will be told from the perspective of one of the four Beatles. It is also the first-ever film to be granted music rights to the Beatles’ discography.
