Sam Mendes Beatles Biopics targets the success of the box office with Paul Mescal, Harris Dickinson, Barry Keoghan and Joseph Quinn as the Fab Four

The Fab Four gathered on stage this week for an announcement of the Beatles All-Star which left a certain fainting of the Internet.

No, Paul McCartney, John Lennon, George Harrison and Ringo Starr do not meet in AI for a joint album with Taylor Swift.

Instead, Rock’n’Roll icons from the 60s will be played by four main hearts of the moment: Paul Mescal (McCartney), Harris Dickinson (Lennon), Joseph Quinn (Harrison) and Barry Keoghan (Starr), in a grid on the big screen produced by Sir Sam Mendes – All ready to go out in 2028.

Each actor adapts to the mold of “The Internet’s Boyfriends” – a term Defined by Glamor magazine Like “a famous or semi-cell male person on which your whole Twitter wire has a crush at the same time”.

When Sir Sam went out on stage with his “group” at the Cinemacon in Las Vegas on Tuesday, the message was clear.

If Beatlemania of the 1960s was defined by adolescent girls who vanished and yelled, the plan is undoubtedly to obtain the Z generation – in the Internet language – “shout, cry, vomit” behind their phone screens in the excitement.

“Each star brings her own brand of modern hysteria,” explains Lisa McLoughlin, the famous evening journalist, “the genre fueled by social media virality and fans’ video changes”.

This is particularly true for Mescal, whose popularity reflects the frenzy a little that the Beatles have triggered once “.

After having turned to glory in the adaptation of the BBC of the BBC of the 2020s, the Irishman marked an Oscar nomination as a tormented father in Aftersun, before finding the status of blockbuster in Gladiator II – passing from Heartbreaker Indie to Hollywood.

The similar is true for his Irish colleague Keoghan. Also nominated for the Oscars for the Banshees of Inisherin, he kissed the status of robust sexual symbol in the cult of last year Saltburn.

Dickinson and Quinn are earlier in their trajectory, but which always burn brilliant – the first with recently alongside Nicole Kidman in the erotic thriller Babygirl and the last turning his head in the foreign things of Netflix.

McLoughlin describes the casting as “logical and predictable” – A strategic decision while the group seeks to secure its heritage with a new generation, while the studios attacked the ambition to attract the streaming era, after the public, back to the cinema not once, but four times nearby.

The timing and the scope of the project summarize the unique heritage of the Beatles as the best -selling group of all time – The catalyst for young people culture and the limits of pop.

It has been 56 years since the four members recorded together for the last time. Lennon was shot down just over a decade later at 40, while Harrison died of cancer in 2001, at the age of 58. The two surviving Beatles, Sir Paul and Sir Ringo, are now in the 80s.

And yet, like the only official biographer in the group, Hunter Davies, said on Wednesday at Radio 4 Today, “the strange thing about the Beatles is that the more we get out of it, the bigger they become”.

The last years have seen Sir Paul apparently working to tighten the music of the Beatles – becoming the oldest headliner in Glastonbury at 80, before passing the release in 2023 of Now Thank, a “final” piece Beatles rebuilt Lennon demonstration voices. He became the 18th single number one of the group in the United Kingdom, more than five decades of their last, and won a Grammy.

The future biopics seem to be a way to continue this on the big screen.

Four years later, from Get Back Docuseries by Peter Jackson, it is the first time that the four members of the group and their areas have granted a complete life story and musical rights for a scripted film.

The casting reflects the distinct identities and stories of the members, each offering something different to the girls and boys of copying if in intoxication by Beatlemania.

McLoughlin feels that the choices “have commercial meaning” as the perfect leaf for an audience now two generations withdrawn from the original Beatlemania.

“They all have dedicated fans bases (many of which may not be regular and deeply connected film buffs to the Beatles), acting the credibility and the experience of directing or co-directing major productions”.

Each film will focus on an individual member of the group. “They meet in different ways – sometimes overlapping, sometimes not,” said Sir Sam.

“These are four very different human beings. It may be a chance to understand them a little deeper.”

THE Barbenheimer phenomenon From the summer of 2023 underlined the growing influence that online public reactions are due to cultural currency.

He also killed Hollywood acceptance of “event cinema” as a way to attract a younger audience. A generation that the executive director of Warner Bros Discovery Vera Dog Previously presented at ForbesSee already the media relationship in streaming-social as the norm.

The calendar of four Sir Sam films plays in this area. It aims to create what Sony’s framework, Tom Rothman, described as “the first bingable theatrical experience”.

“Frankly, we need major cinematographic events to get people out of the house,” said Sir Sam.

Films can now develop Distinct digital identities thanks to the audience projectionAs shown in the viral success of Saltburn.

The manufacturers of the Beatles biopics no doubt bet on its distribution of “Internet Boyfriends” shooting a younger audience – without the same nostalgic attachment to the Beatles – engaged on social networks and, the leaders hope, the gaze of the screen of the phone on the big screen.

The extent to which musical performance will arise is unknown.

But Betle Biopics could capitalize on the booming genre of money that has found the success of the last decade. .

It is also proven from the ground of fertile heart, with the Beatles Castés after the turns of Jacob Elardi and Austin Butler as an elvis, alongside Timothee Chalamet nominated with Oscars as Bob Dylan in a complete unknown.

However, there are risks, explains Dade Hayes, business writer at Deadline and co-author of Binge Times.

He says that, even if he congratulates Rothman’s “intelligent handle” and that the film buff in him values ​​the “daring declaration of biopic on the value of cinemas and community visualization”, the “realities of the market have edifying signs.

First, the British box office has not yet bounced back from the pandemic, while American sockets are more than 20% below pre-cuvid levels. “If people do not die of desire to come back at regular intervals in cinemas,” explains Hayes, “then you hold an expensive set of assets that are difficult to monetize”.

And a multi-liberation strategy is based on the “fuse lit with the first episode,” said Hayes.

He underlines the horizon films of Kevin Costner, originally envisaged as a theatrical franchise in several parts, to wade once the first payment has landed, as an example of the dangers.

For McLoughlin, the three -year difference between the casting announcement and the release date in 2028 adds additional risks, especially in the fast online space where fans can change.

But beyond the dynamics of the industry, there is also a Talking-Pot-joined much closer to home.

The Beatles Biopics, celebrating four guys from Scouse who conquered the world and put Liverpool on the map, will not present any local talent in the main roles.

As a Liverpudlian said In a Tiktok video has loved more than 200,000 times: “I love the measure as much as the next girl but (the lack of representation) breaks my heart”.

McLoughlin agrees, stressing that James Corden last week urged the television industry to be “more daring” and to support ideas that “could scare you a little”. She thinks that movie studios should do the same.

“The Beatles themselves were unknown until they were not,” she said. “It could have been an opportunity for a newcomer to have his own Beatles moment – going from darkness in real time”.

And perhaps the greatest missed opportunity of all McLoughlin additions is the failure to highlight actors Liverpudlian in a Beatles biopic. “The group is Liverpool’s largest cultural export, but the city’s deep talent basin has been completely overlooked,” she adds.

Social media, on the other hand, are already flooded with doubt about Keoghan’s ability to deliver a coherent schouse, questioning his attempts to Saltburn.

However, as Hutter Davies said, the Beatles have long been more than a simple local group. They continue to grow.

In 1966, Lennon sadly described them as greater than Jesus. More than five decades later, the studio behind the four films – and perhaps cinema in general – is undoubtedly made on a renewal of Beatlemania.