No, it’s not an April Fools’ Day joke.
The hottest casting announcement of the year has indeed finally dropped: at last we know who will be playing the Beatles in Sam Mendes’ upcoming four-pack of Beatles movies.
“Babygirl” hunk Harris Dickinson will play John Lennon, and “Gladiator II” star Paul Mescal will appear as Paul McCartney.
Mescal’s “Gladiator II” co-star Joseph Quinn will take on the role of George Harrison, while “Saltburn” lead Barry Keoghan will play Ringo Starr.
The news was confirmed during a surprise appearance by Mendes at CinemaCon, a convention of movie theatre owners, in Las Vegas yesterday. Mendes revealed he will shoot the moves simultaneously, a process which will take more than a year.
The release order of the films has yet to be announced. All four movies, however, will come out in April 2028, creating what Mendes said Sony head Tom Rothman dubbed “the first bingeable moment in cinema.”
According to Deadline, Mendes said he had been trying to make a Beatles film for a long time, but despaired of fitting their stories into one film. A TV series, he said, also didn’t seem like the right move. For “The Beatles — A Four-Film Cinematic Event,” the tag line will be “Each man has his own story, but together they are legendary.”
Some reactions on X were not particularly jubilant; many users posted that the actors’ lack of resemblance to their real-life counterparts was disappointing, while others posited that a random selection of today’s hottest male stars was simply slotted into the roles.
Noted X personality Bald Ann Dowd joked that Bill Hader should play all four musicians, while one member of the vocal “Better Man” fandom complained that they wanted a “Take That biopic with monkey Robbie Williams reprising his role” instead.
