Paul Mescal Leads Sam Mendes' Beatles Biopics With 2028 Release
Paul Mescal leads sam mendes' beatles biopics, with four films due in 2028. The casting gives Sam Mendes a clean split of the group’s story: one film each for Paul McCartney, John Lennon, George Harrison and Ringo Starr.
Mescal, Dickinson, Quinn, Keoghan
Mescal will play McCartney, Harris Dickinson will play Lennon, Joseph Quinn will play Harrison and Barry Keoghan will play Starr. That lineup turns the project into a four-part release strategy rather than a single ensemble film, and it gives each member his own screen time instead of forcing the Beatles into one compressed arc.
The drama series Hamburg Days is also in production. That adds another Beatles title to a market already building around the band, which is why the Mendes films are being positioned as the larger event.
Beatlemania in the 1990s
Ian Leslie said the UK was in the middle of a new wave of Beatlemania that was reminiscent of the 1990s revival. He also said the latest surge could be traced back to Peter Jackson’s eight-hour documentary Get Back, which pulled the band back into the center of public conversation.
Leslie put it plainly: “We’re only just starting to come to terms with how big a cultural phenomenon they were.” He also argued that the Beatles had moved beyond ordinary pop rivalry, saying, “That rivalry is irrelevant; they moved on to a plane of their own. You think about Shakespeare: we’re still reading Marlowe and the other Elizabethan playwrights, but the bard is – like the Beatles – in a whole separate category.”
Reynolds on the Beatles shift
Simon Reynolds described the group’s rapid transformation as “the greatest adventure that ever happened in pop music”. He pointed to the way the Beatles moved from pop stars to psychedelic travellers in less than a decade, a shift that still gives studios a durable commercial story to sell in 2028.
Reynolds also said, “Here’s this shabby, worn-out, repressed little culture thousands of miles away that is unexpectedly sparring with and even – I would say, with Stones and Beatles – eclipsing the source nation.” For Mendes, that kind of cultural memory is the asset: four films, four band members, and a built-in audience that has already been warmed up by Get Back and another wave of interest that has not gone away.
