Director Sam Mendes to produce four individual biopics on the Beatles

[JohnS]

Director Sam Mendes is going to tell the Beatles story, but from each band member's point of view. Of course, Mendes has been known recently for some exceptional movies such as 1917 and the James Bond film, Skyfall. The films are set for release in 2027. It goes without saying that this is a massive undertaking, especially if you consider that Peter Jackson took years himself just to make a documentary series out of the Get Back project. More below...

Sam Mendes Will Tell the Story of the Beatles Across Four Films From Each Member’s Point of View

“I’m honored to be telling the story of the greatest rock band of all time, and excited to challenge the notion of what constitutes a trip to the movies,” the director shared in a statement

 

By Larisha Paul

 

 

The Beatles, English music group Pop (1962-1970). Standing : Paul MacCartney and John Lennon (1940-1980). Seat : Ringo Starr and George Harrison (1943-2000). August 1966. ROGER VIOLLET COLLECTION/GETTY IMAGES

 

The Beatles are going solo all over again. Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, George Harrison, and John Lennon will each be the subject of their own solo films directed by Sam Mendes, who is taking a microscopic approach to the usually overarching music biopic narrative. The films, according to a statement from Sony Pictures, will tell the story of the Beatles from each member’s point of view.

“I’m honored to be telling the story of the greatest rock band of all time, and excited to challenge the notion of what constitutes a trip to the movies,” Mendes shared in a statement.

Mendes — whose previous credits include American Beauty, Revolutionary Road, Skyfall, and more — will be the first to have full access to both the life stories of each member and the band’s music rights for a scripted film. He will direct all four films and produce alongside Neal Street Productions’ Pippa Harris and Julie Pastor.

“We intend this to be a uniquely thrilling, and epic cinematic experience: four films, told from four different perspectives which tell a single story about the most celebrated band of all time,” Harris shared. “To have The Beatles’ and Apple Corps’ blessing to do this is an immense privilege. From our first meeting with Tom Rothman and Elizabeth Gabler, it was clear that they shared both our passion and ambition for this project, and we can’t think of a more perfect home than Sony Pictures.”

The four films are expected to be completed and ready for theatrical release in 2027. The format of the premiere schedule and the order in which the films will come out has not yet been detailed, though a press release has described the approach as “innovative and groundbreaking.”

In 2021, the Beatles three-part docuseries Get Back premiered on Disney+ with nearly eight hours of archival footage. It was a feast for fans of the band, who received an up close and personal look at the journey to their final public performance in January 1969. That one event was meant to be captured by Peter Jackson in a two-hour film, who got it down to eight hours, but has mentioned the existence of an 18-hour director’s cut. It’s no surprise that the legend of the Beatles would need to span four separate movies.

“Theatrical movie events today must be culturally seismic. Sam’s daring, large-scale idea is that and then some,” Tom Rothman, Chairman and CEO of Sony Pictures’ Motion Picture Group, shared in a statement. “Pairing his premiere filmmaking team, with the music and the stories of four young men who changed the world, will rock audiences all over the globe. We are deeply grateful to all parties and look forward ourselves to breaking some rules with Sam’s uniquely artistic vision.”

Source: https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/beatles-biopic-sam-mendes-directing-four-films-1234971245/

[JohnS]

Following the news of Sam Mendes' ambitious undertaking, the internet has been 'abuzz' as to who to cast for the lead roles to play the Beatles themselves. Below is an article having fun with that speculation...

Barry Keoghan as John Lennon? Who Sam Mendes should cast in his Beatles movies

Imagine … Barry Keoghan and John Lennon. Composite: Getty/PR

Following the news that Mendes will direct four fab films about the Fab Four, our critic picks his fantasy lineup

Just when we were getting sick of the Marvel Cinematic Universe … Sam Mendes comes along with the Beatles Cinematic Universe. It’s a quartet of interlocking movies about the Fab Four, each centred on one band member, and with the fascinating promise of overlaps and POV shifts, perhaps inspired by Lucas Belvaux’s triple-decker Trilogy pictures or Joao Canijo’s mirror image films Bad Living and Living Bad. Mendes’s moptop movies may tag quadrilaterally around key moments … Shea Stadium, the Maureen Cleave interview, Lennon’s death? But who to cast? Here is my fantasy lineup.

Barry Keoghan as John Lennon

Keoghan has already played a scouser in Emerald Fennell’s Saltburn, and showed us his dance moves to Sophie Ellis-Bextor’s Murder on the Dancefloor (although Lennon, in fact the Beatles generally, were not dancers as such). The fully nude album cover for Two Virgins should, come to think of it, be no problem either. Keoghan would be excellent at Lennon’s cheeky and insolent grin, with the fierce scepticism, insubordination and the radicalism. His capacity for innocent open-faced guile would have a special complication in the granny specs, and the gradually lengthening hair would create a new gravitas and opaque quality. For Aunt Mimi it would possibly be Emily Watson and for Yoko I’m thinking Tōko Miura from Ryu Hamaguchi’s Drive My Car (but not just because of that film’s title).

Leo Woodall as Paul McCartney

Let it be … Leo Woodall and Paul McCartney. Composite: Zoe McConnell, Getty

Woodall is shattering hearts all over the country with his performance as Dexter in the Netflix version of David Nicholls’ One Day, opposite the excellent Ambika Mod. This casting – Leo would need a dark wig – would tap into the vulnerability combined with ambition that he showed in One Day. But it would also connect with the sly steel that McCartney always had and which Woodall gave us as the lairy and laddish Jack in the second season of the luxury-hotel satire The White Lotus. He would be great opposite Keoghan in the scene where Paul meets John for the first time at the Liverpool church fete in 1957, where Lennon was playing with his skiffle combo the Quarrymen. Boyish Leo/Paul meets tough Barry/John and there is bromance meet-cute electricity. (The Paul and John films could singly play the same scene from reverse angles of course.) For Linda I’m thinking Florence Pugh and for some scenes in Abbey Road where everyone starts quarrelling, it could be Dominic West as George Martin.

Finn Wolfhard as George Harrison

Got my mind set on you … Finn Wolfhard and George Harrison. Composite: Getty

Canadian star Finn Wolfhard can do the baby-faced quality, the weirdly almost unformed innocence that defines the Beatles in their early years but could also do the watchful detachment and also injured resentment that complicates the George persona, as he had to see his creative contribution overlooked in favour of the Lennon/McCartney double-act. Wolfhard is also in a band himself: initially the Canadian indie rock group Calpurnia and then the Aubreys. The Stranger Things star, playing Mike, started that show as innocent and ingenuous but also as a natural leader who grew to be a more complicated figure as the drama progressed, and this is the energy he would need to play George Harrison. For the sensational love-triangle heartbreak of his later years, I’m thinking Anya Taylor-Joy as Pattie Boyd and Will Poulter as Eric Clapton.

Harry Melling as Ringo Starr

Don’t let me down … Harry Melling and Ringo Starr. Composite: Getty

Ringo has the capability to steal this whole four-movie spectacle from under the noses of everyone else, and Harry Melling (Dudley Dursley from the Harry Potter films) is the actor to upstage everyone: he can play comedy and drama and he can play the bad guy or the misunderstood good guy. As Ringo, Melling could put across the pathos of his early years of illness and educational disadvantage – the years when he got a life-changing copy of the song Bedtime for Drums on his own sickbed. Melling could portray a deadpan insouciance from behind the drum kit, but he could amusingly fabricate Ringo’s wacky performance in the movie Help!, in the various black-and-white pastiche sequences, opposite Ian McKellen as Wilfrid Brambell.

Robert Pattinson as Pete Best

A day in the life … Robert Pattinson and Pete Best. Composite: Getty

This could be a short film to precede each of the main four, with Pattinson as Pete Best, walking moodily and wordlessly around the rainy streets of Hamburg for three minutes in a leather jacket.

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/film/2024/feb/21/sam-mendes-cast-beatles-movies

[MoeFOH]

Love this concept. Huge undertaking, though. Hoping they do it justice.