Prepare for a lot of moptop in a short period of time. Sam Mendes produces four Beatles films – and the four will be released in the theater in April 2028.
The filmmaker, who announced the news of Cinemacon, also confirmed the very specified casting. Paul Mescal plays Paul McCartney, Joseph Quinn will represent George Harrison, Barry Keoghan will play like Ringo Starr and Harris Dickinson will put his turn on John Lennon. The four stars came out on stage and bowed in the style that the group popularized in its peak.
Mendes promised that the biopic in several parts, officially entitled “The Beatles – a cinematographic event of four films”, will be the “first excessive theatrical experience”. It is not known if it means that the films will be published at the same time or one per week.
“We need major cinematographic events to get people out of the house,” said Mendes to theater owners on Monday during the presentation of Sony.
The director, whose credits include “American Beauty” and “Skyfall”, had dreamed of bringing the Fab Four to screens for years. But he did not want to do a mini-series and he feared that “the story was too huge to integrate into a single film”. He therefore proposed a plan to tell the story of the “biggest group in history” from the point of view of each of its members, to try to capture their improbable trip from Liverpool to the center of world culture. This meant four autonomous features and one of the greatest bets in the history of cinema.
“It is a chance to understand them deeper,” promised Mendes.
The film is also the first narrative feature to be granted musical rights on the vast success catalog of the Beatles such as “Strawberry Fields”, “Let it be”, “I am the Morse”, “Yellow Submarine” and … far too much to mention here.
Mendes said that the main photography on the four films would take a year, a sign of the way he undertakes an effort. Tom Rothman, the chief of Sony Pictures who supervised production on a certain science fiction epic by James Cameron when he was in Fox, joked that the film of Mendes gave him flashbacks “Avatar”.
We all know how this bet turned out.
