Sam Mendes' four Beatles biopics are now due in 2028, with each film set to focus on a different member of the band. Paul Mescal will play Paul McCartney, Harris Dickinson will portray John Lennon, Joseph Quinn is lined up as George Harrison and Barry Keoghan will play Ringo Starr.
The films land at a moment when interest in the Beatles is rising again in the UK. Ian Leslie said the country was in the middle of a new wave of Beatlemania, one he said felt reminiscent of the 1990s revival, and he traced the latest surge back to Peter Jackson’s eight-hour documentary Get Back. Leslie said, “We’re only just starting to come to terms with how big a cultural phenomenon they were.”
That timing matters because the Beatles are not just a band with an archive; they are still part of the cultural present. Their songs have soundtracked lives for 60 years, and their friendships, breakups and tragedies still pull in attention that most artists long ago lost. The Mendes project is expected to become the biggest upcoming Beatles event, not least because it arrives with four separate films rather than one, each designed to pull a different thread from the group’s story.
There is still a familiar argument hanging around the edges of the renewed fascination. Beatles and Rolling Stones comparisons have never really disappeared, but Leslie dismissed that rivalry as beside the point. “That rivalry is irrelevant; they moved on to a plane of their own,” he said, comparing the Beatles to Shakespeare and placing them in a category of their own rather than in a pop contest with another band. For him, the deeper story is not competition but endurance: a group that keeps expanding instead of fading.
That broader wave is already visible beyond the films. Christian Schwochow’s drama series Hamburg Days is also in production, adding another layer to the current run of Beatles-related projects. What is not yet known is how much the Mendes films will change the conversation when they finally arrive in 2028, but by then they will not be entering a quiet field. They will be arriving into a culture that is already listening again.
