Four films. Four perspectives. One unprecedented cinematic experiment.
Sam Mendes isn't making a Beatles biopic—he's making four of them. And somehow, Sony Pictures said yes.
The first official images have dropped, featuring Paul Mescal as Paul McCartney, Harris Dickinson as John Lennon, Joseph Quinn as George Harrison, and Barry Keoghan as Ringo Starr. Each actor will anchor their own film, telling the Beatles story from their character's point of view.
It's the kind of idea that sounds insane in a pitch meeting. And yet here we are, with production underway and an April 2028 theatrical release planned.
"We're not just making one film about the Beatles—we're making four," Mendes told industry insiders. The goal isn't just to retell the same story four times with different camera angles. It's to understand each member "a little more deeply" than a conventional biopic allows.
Think Rashomon meets A Hard Day's Night. Or maybe The Social Network times four. The point is: nobody's done this before with a music biopic.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, the supporting cast is equally stacked: Saoirse Ronan as Linda McCartney, James Norton as manager Brian Epstein, Anna Sawai as Yoko Ono. Three different screenwriters—Jez Butterworth, Peter Straughan, and Jack Thorne—are crafting the individual scripts.
Sony is even marketing it unconventionally. Instead of the usual Twitter blitz, they distributed physical postcards with first-look images at the Liverpool Institute of Performing Arts, letting students discover them organically. It's charming, analog, very Beatles.
"There hasn't been an enterprise like this before, and you can't think about it in traditional releasing terms," a Sony executive said. Which is studio-speak for: we have no idea if this will work, but we're committed.
Here's the thing: ambitious music biopics have a mixed track record. For every Walk the Line, there's a Get On Up. For every Bohemian Rhapsody (love it or hate it), there are a dozen forgettable jukebox movies.
But the four-film structure could be Mendes' secret weapon. Each Beatle gets space to breathe. George Harrison doesn't have to be the quiet one in the corner—he gets his own movie. Ringo gets to be more than the drummer who showed up late. Even the Lennon-McCartney partnership, usually the center of Beatles narratives, becomes just part of the story.
Will audiences show up for four separate films about the same band? That's the billion-dollar question. But if Mendes pulls this off, it could redefine how we think about music biopics—and franchises in general.
In Hollywood, nobody knows anything—except me, occasionally. And my gut says this could be something special.
