The Four Sam Mendes Beatles Films (2028): Everything We Know

The Basics: Four Films, One Release Window

Sam Mendes is directing four feature films about the Beatles for Sony Pictures, one told from the point of view of each band member, and all four are scheduled to open in cinemas together in April 2028, with 7 April 2028 listed as the US date. The project's official name is The Beatles, A Four-Film Cinematic Event (Sony styles it with a dash). Paul Mescal plays Paul McCartney, Harris Dickinson plays John Lennon, Joseph Quinn plays George Harrison and Barry Keoghan plays Ringo Starr.

Mendes has said the idea took shape in 2022, and the deal with Apple Corps was finalised and first reported in February 2024. What makes the project unusual is the rights. Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr and the families of John Lennon and George Harrison granted the production full life story and music rights for scripted films, the first time that has happened for a Beatles drama. Apple Corps is credited as a production partner alongside Sony and Mendes's company, and Mendes was given creative freedom on how to tell the story.

Sony presented the cast and the April 2028 release at CinemaCon in Las Vegas in the spring of 2025, and Mendes described the plan as the first "bingeable" theatrical experience. As of 19 September 2026, Sony has not said publicly whether audiences are expected to watch the four films in a set order, or exactly how cinemas will schedule them across the release window.

The Confirmed Cast

The four Beatles were confirmed by Sony at CinemaCon in 2025: Paul Mescal as Paul McCartney, Harris Dickinson as John Lennon, Joseph Quinn as George Harrison and Barry Keoghan as Ringo Starr.

On 31 October 2025, Sony announced four more leading roles, also published on the Beatles' official site: Saoirse Ronan as Linda (Eastman) McCartney, Anna Sawai as Yoko Ono, Aimee Lou Wood as Pattie Boyd and Mia McKenna-Bruce as Maureen (Cox) Starkey. The same announcement said casting for Cynthia Lennon, Brian Epstein, George Martin, Ravi Shankar and other key roles would follow.

Those roles have since been announced and reported by Variety, TheWrap and Deadline: James Norton as Brian Epstein, Harry Lloyd as George Martin, David Morrissey as Jim McCartney (Paul's father), Leanne Best as Mimi Smith (John's aunt), Bobby Schofield as Neil Aspinall, Daniel Hoffmann-Gill as Mal Evans, Arthur Darvill as Derek Taylor and Adam Pally as Allen Klein. In 2026, Variety reported Lucy Boynton as Jane Asher, Harry Lawtey as Stuart Sutcliffe, Morfydd Clark as Cynthia Lennon and Farhan Akhtar as Ravi Shankar.

For McCartney fans, the key pairings are Mescal with Boynton and with Ronan: Jane Asher was Paul's partner from 1963 until 1968, and Linda from 1968 until her death in 1998. Their stories, along with Morrissey's Jim McCartney, are likely to shape the Paul film, although Sony has not published plot details for any of the four.

Writers, Producers and Crew

Three screenwriters are credited on the project: Jez Butterworth, Peter Straughan and Jack Thorne. Butterworth wrote the stage play Jerusalem and co-wrote the film Ford v Ferrari; Straughan won the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay for Conclave; Thorne has written widely for stage and screen, including Harry Potter and the Cursed Child and Adolescence.

Mendes produces alongside Pippa Harris, Julie Pastor and Alexandra Derbyshire, through Neal Street Productions, the company he co-founded in 2003. Sony Pictures Entertainment is financing and distributing worldwide.

Mendes, whose films include American Beauty, Skyfall and 1917, designed the four-film structure from the start: each film follows one Beatle, and together they tell the band's story from four angles. How much the films overlap, and where each one begins and ends, has not been announced.

Production and First Looks

Filming was under way by November 2025, with the production based in the UK and shooting the four films back to back. On 29 January 2026, Sony released the first look at the four leads in costume, printed on postcards and left for students to find at the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts, the school Paul co-founded in the building of his old grammar school, with more cards distributed in Hamburg, New York and Tokyo. The images were then published online.

Public filming has been widely photographed. Reports and photos in 2026 have placed the production in Liverpool, London and in Spain, in Barcelona and Salou. On 16 August 2026 the four leads recreated the Abbey Road cover on the zebra crossing outside Abbey Road Studios, drawing crowds and wide press coverage. We treat these as reports of filming rather than confirmed scene details, since Sony has not published plot information.

No trailer had been released as of 19 September 2026. Given the April 2028 date, a first trailer is most likely during 2027, but Sony has not announced a date.

How This Differs From Earlier Beatles Dramas

Scripted films about the Beatles are not new, but none has had this level of access. Birth of the Beatles (1979), directed by Richard Marquand for television, covered the early years. Backbeat (1994) told the Hamburg story through Stuart Sutcliffe and Astrid Kirchherr, with a studio band of Greg Dulli, Thurston Moore, Don Fleming, Mike Mills, Dave Grohl and Dave Pirner recording the rock and roll covers the Beatles played. Nowhere Boy (2009), directed by Sam Taylor-Johnson, followed John Lennon's teenage years in Liverpool, with Aaron Taylor-Johnson as John and Thomas Brodie-Sangster as the young Paul.

Each of those films worked around what it could not use. Without rights to the Beatles' own recordings and songs, they stayed in the years before the famous records or relied on cover versions of other people's material. The Mendes project is the first drama to have full music rights and the life story rights of all four Beatles or their estates, which is why fans expect it to cover far more of the story, potentially from Liverpool to the split.

That access also brings pressure. Paul and Ringo are still alive and active, the families of John and George are closely involved in the Beatles' legacy, and fans know the story in extraordinary detail. Every casting choice and every photo from the set has been examined closely online, and the films will face an audience that notices the wrong guitar in the wrong year, from a Rickenbacker bass before August 1965 to a Höfner with the pickups in the wrong place.

What Is Not Confirmed

Several things you will read online are not confirmed. Individual titles for the four films have not been announced; they are referred to by each Beatle's name. Running times, the order in which the films should be watched, the soundtrack content and any later streaming home are all unannounced. Claims about which songs appear, who sings them and whether the actors perform the music themselves should be treated as speculation until Sony or Apple Corps says otherwise.

Reports that other well-known actors are playing additional roles appear regularly. Unless they come from Sony, the Beatles' official channels or a trade outlet with a clear source, we do not include them. The same applies to claims about the films' length, rating or awards campaigns.

Finally, be careful with trailers. There is no official trailer yet, so any video presented as one on YouTube or social media is fan-made, however convincing it looks.

Getting Ready for 2028

There is plenty to watch and read while you wait. Peter Jackson's Get Back (2021), the Beatles Anthology series (reissued with a new ninth episode in November 2025) and Morgan Neville's Man on the Run (on Prime Video since February 2026) cover the real events the films will dramatise. Our roundup of the best Beatles documentaries compares them and explains where to watch each one.

For Paul's side of the story, the best biographies and Paul's own books give detail no film can. Our guide to the best books about Paul McCartney lists the ones we recommend, from The Lyrics to the Wings oral history.

We will update this page whenever Sony or the Beatles' official channels announce new cast, titles, a trailer or changes to the release. Our McCartney release calendar tracks the date alongside every other McCartney release.