The Beatles are getting a bunch of biopics
1917 director Sam Mendes will direct four different movies from the perspectives of John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr
Aux News The Beatles
If there’s one thing we know that modern Beatles fans like, it’s sitting through several straight hours of mostly the same content. So those devoted acolytes who relished in Get Back will be thrilled to hear that Sam Mendes is making the fictionalized Beatles project to end all Beatles projects: one story, four movies, each told from the perspective of the band’s individual members, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr. All four movies are slated to premiere in 2027, with a specific release strategy that Sony Pictures Entertainment promises to be “innovative and groundbreaking” (per Variety).
“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,” 1917 director Mendes said in a statement (via Variety). This big Beatlemania swing was apparently all Mendes’ idea. “We went out to L.A. just before Christmas to pitch the project, and it’s fair to say we were met with universal enthusiasm,” he told Deadline. “The reason Sony stood out from competing offers was down to [SPE Execs Tom Rothman and Elizabeth Gabler]’s passion for the idea, and commitment to propelling these films theatrically in an innovative and exciting way.”
Though there have been documentaries (Get Back, The Beatles: Eight Days A Week, to name some recent examples), there hasn’t yet been a definitive biopic of the legendary British rock band. Fictionalized versions of the group have appeared on screen, most notably in Sam Taylor-Johnson’s Nowhere Boy (a biopic of Lennon’s early years in Liverpool starring the director’s future husband, Aaron Taylor-Johnson). However, this is the first project to which Apple Corps Ltd. and The Beatles (McCartney, Starr, and the families of the late Lennon and Harrison) have granted full life and music rights.
Music biopics have always been popular, and have often come with a fair amount of prestige. Think What’s Love Got To Do With It starring Angela Bassett, Walk The Line starring Joaquin Phoenix, Ray starring Jamie Foxx, Elvis starring Austin Butler, and Bohemian Rhapsody starring Rami Malek, who won an Oscar for his portrayal of Freddie Mercury. Particularly in the wake of Malek’s Oscar, it seems like the push for rock flicks has increased, with the likes of Rocketman, I Wanna Dance With Somebody, Respect, One Love, and the upcoming Back To Black.
There’s one thing distributors seem to crave even more than a classic awards-bait biopic right now, though: event cinema. 2023 saw a theater-going revival with the “Barbenheimer’’ phenomenon and Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour movie, which each in their own way enticed fans to buy tickets with a promise of something beyond just seeing a movie. People dressed up, they attended in groups, they danced in the aisles, they wanted to be part of a communal experience that went beyond run-of-the-mill moviegoing. And in the case of Barbenheimer, that helped increase ticket sales for two movies.
Now, combine a classic rock biopic with one of the biggest, most beloved acts in music history and add in an innovative event cinema strategy from an award-winning director. It’s really no wonder Sony Pictures Entertainment got on board with this. From the casting to the soundtrack to the four-film-in-one-year release, this project is destined to be a regular presence in film discourse for the next three years. Congratulations, Beatlesheads!
49 Comments
They should call it Lucy in the Sky with Rashomon
It’s a little disappointing that the formula for musical biopics seems to involve just identifying the most famous musician who has not yet had a biopic, regardless of whether they’re especially interesting. I’m a big fan of Beatles music, but I’m not sure the Beatles themselves are especially fascinating. The Beatles were incredibly successful, broke up after a while over tensions that do not seem to have been especially cinematic, then each went on to have very successful solo careers. Where’s the drama?The best biopics aren’t necessarily about people who are super famous, but rather people who have lived really interesting and unexpected lives. That’s true about Schindler’s List, Catch Me If You Can, The Elephant Man, The Insider, Serpico, Ed Wood, and American Splendor, among others. Even when a great biopic is made about someone who is very, very famous — like Amadeus, The Social Network, or Patton — the subject often has the value of being, well, pretty weird.
Has anyone done a biopic of Judge Dread yet?
They did in 1995, but some folks thought they took too many liberties with the source material.
I don’t know, I’m slowly making my way through Mark Lewisohn’s 1,700-page biography of the Beatles (it ends in 1962) and I think there’s enough story to make a solid prestige TV series.
It’s funny that this is pitched as “event cinema” when it seems tailor-made for streaming. I might subscribe for a month to watch this but I’m not paying for full-price theater tickets four times.
There’s only band’s biopic I want to see.
I hear from another article that The Beatles are huge which the under 30 crowd. I dared question that fact and was roundly pilloried.
I used to work in commercial radio and I would get in arguments with my coworkers all the time about this band. I felt smothered by them. They would get their own special shows, just hours and hours of their music. “Beatles Brunch” and shit like that. Despite the fact that they were already all over the airwaves like a pillowcase. I would show them videos of young people from around the world who had no idea who the Beatles were and I would laugh and they would get steamed up. They would claim I was saying The Beatles weren’t great. Which is not what I’m saying. They had their time. They were influential. But their time is up.
Rock music is dead. Or rock music is the new jazz. Pick your path to irrelevancy. In a generation they will be footnotes. And boy do their fans hate hearing that.
I got into some heated argument with someone on here about how many kids under 30 have no idea who they are and he just went after me hard. I tease my buddy that is constantly listening to 60-70s singer songwriters saying that music is as old as ragtime was when we were teenagers.
Footnotes to what? I don’t know if I even understand what you mean by that. Footnotes to rock music, popular music, music in general? I don’t know if a band so influential can ever be truly irrelevant. We’re still discussing Beethoven and Mozart. Maybe they won’t always be on commercial radio, but it hardly seems like their time is up when people are still complaining that they’re smothered by them.
If you gauge relevance by awareness of and active interest in them, by succeeding generations (outside of boomers), then their relevance is already declining. Especially if you expand the list of music listeners beyond the mostly white, American/European audience.
And you can absolutely make the same case for Beethoven and Mozart. You’re not discussing them, you’re name dropping them.
If you’re only gauging relevance by what young people are into, that relevance will also decline.If you gauge it by contributions to the form, The Beatles, Beethoven, and Mozart will stay relevant for hundreds of years more.I assure you, people still discuss Beethoven and Mozart all over the world. This article reports that as of 2019 The Beatles music has been streamed 1.7 billion times, and 30% of those streams are from users age 18-24, followed by 17% age 25-29.https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/26/the-beatles-remain-a-pop-culture-phenomenon-even-among-gen-z-fans.html
I welcome questioning, but I wonder if maybe on TikTok or Youtube or whatever? Like Friends is hugely popular with the under 30.
with a specific release strategy that Sony Pictures Entertainment promises to be “innovative and groundbreaking”They’re all going to be shown at the same time in each theater and all four films will feature a few scenes of shared footage and those will be synced up. Everything else will be madness and cacophony to provide the audience with some perspective on what doing all those drugs was like.
My most controversial opinion is we should move on from The Beatles as a culture. It’s been 60 years, that’s enough. The Get Back documentary should have been the end. No more biopics, no more documentaries, no more books (except if Paul or Ringo write memoirs), no more podcasts, no more re-releases. No more asking Paul or Ringo about it. A lot has happened in the last 60 years. Let’s move on.
It’s enough already
Yeah, it’s time for an intensive pop-culture-wide investigation of the New Order football classic World In Motion.Including the recently unearthed Peter Beardsley rendition of the iconic rap…
John Barnes will recreate his rap any time any place, even if it means risking missing his stop on the tube
we should move on from The Beatles as a cultureNot until the last Boomer girl has died off.
I generally share your opinion, so don’t feel too alone. I do think there’s a lot of room for nuance here, though; when this argument comes up people tend to either express “the Beatles should be worshipped as gods” and “the Beatles are old and lame and should be forgotten”. Which are both self-evidently foolish positions. (And are independent on whether someone actually enjoys listening to the Beatles. I have some nostalgic fondness for listening to their music when I was a kid, but I don’t really listen to them now and they’re not anything like my go-to when I want to experience particular emotions.)
I think the balance needs to be between recognizing their historical importance (which is immense and virtually impossible to overstate), and not slavishly insisting that their work is just as important and relevant now as it was *checks notes* fifty-plus years ago. Culture moves on, even from hugely important artworks, and enshrining works as Forever Important plants an immovable anchor. Anchors are important, in that they prevent you from being tossed around, but they can also hold you back, in that they prevent you from going new places.
Go nuts in moving on. Some of us are still interested.
Bring on the BCU.Is Mendes doing Fab Four: Endgame?
It would be hilarious if Ringo’s movie was a half hour long.
And animated.
Ringo has the most interesting story because, at the time he joined the band, he was an experienced professional musician who had already seen success playing with other bands who have since been lost to time, and he was kind of slumming it by even playing with these amateur kids from the neighborhood. And of course his legacy became that he was the least talented Beatle who hitched along for the ride. That’s a pretty fun character journey.
Plus his childhood was straight out of a Charles Dickens story.
They should hire Paul King to direct and give Ringo’s movie the full Dickens treatment.
Hardly slumming it – the Beatles had a record deal and were widely acknowledged to be the best band in Liverpool at the time. He didn’t leave Rory Storm and the Hurricanes to slum it.
Yeah, dumping Pete Best and hiring Ringo was a good move. Ringo was as famous in Liverpool at the time as the rest of the band. I take issue with the idea that Ringo was the least talented Beatle but that’s my opinion. (And if you ever get the chance to see any incarnation of his All Starr Band, do it. Fun shows no matter who he hires for that tour.)
I saw the All Starr Band in 1989 with Joe Walsh and Billy Preston! Sadly the only time I got to see a real Beatle perform, because I didn’t shell out for a scalper last time Paul McCartney was in town and now I’ll probably never get the chance. I also saw Pete Best once, which I think counts?
Ringo Fuck Yourself
More like BORINGpics amiright??
This is a pretty cool concept, and I’m looking forward to checking it out.Still, the best Beatles movie was Two of Us, which came out on VH1 (back when VH1 mattered) in 2000. So good.
Fifth Beatle or not interested
I hope I will enjoy my show.
That seems hugely unnecessary. On the other hand, I’d love to see them use this strategy for a Polyphonic Spree biopic.
Ringo: The Tank Engine Years(Hard to remember he was actually a Beatle XD)
“one of the biggest, most beloved acts in music history”One of?
If you take the word of people in these comments, the world has apparently “moved on” and we should “stop listening to them.”
And as for that Mozart chap…
didn’t he get a movie last year?
Wow, I’ve got to speed up production on my biopic of Murray the K.
There was a movie called Backbeat in 1994, about the Beatles’ early days (mostly about Lennon and Stu Sutcliffe). I remember it as pretty good. Sheryl Lee from Twin Peaks was Astrid (Stu’s girlfriend) but I’m damned if I remember who played John.
I remember renting this on VHS and liking it well enough at the time. I don’t remember who played Lennon, either, but I do recall Stephen Dorff played Sutcliffe and the guy from Neverwhere wound up playing McCartney in this and another project.
I am reminded of when KISS released solos albums on the same day. This should be fine.
I hope that Pete Best gets a short film or a DVD extra or something like that.