Paul Mescal and Barry Keoghan to star in Sam Mendes’ Beatles films

Paul Mescal and Barry Keoghan have been confirmed as part of the all-star line-up who will play members of the Beatles in four major new films about the band.

Normal People and Gladiator II actor Mescal will portray Sir Paul McCartney, while Saltburn star Keoghan will step into Ringo Starr’s shoes.

The acting supergroup will also feature Harris Dickinson, who was most recently seen opposite Nicole Kidman in Babygirl, as John Lennon.

And Joseph Quinn will go from Marvel’s Fantastic Four to the Fab Four, playing George Harrison in the big-screen quadrilogy, which will be directed by Sir Sam Mendes.

The Oscar-winning director was joined by the four actors for the announcement at the CinemaCon convention in Las Vegas on Monday.

Each film will focus on a different member of the legendary group.

“Each one is told from the particular perspective of just one of the guys,” Sir Sam told the event. “They intersect in different ways – sometimes overlapping, sometimes not.

“They’re four very different human beings. Perhaps this is a chance to understand them a little more deeply. But together, all four films will tell the story of the greatest band in history.”

The films will be released “in proximity” to each other in April 2028.

The director explained: “I just felt the story of the band was too huge to fit into a single movie, and that turning it into a TV mini-series just somehow didn’t feel right.”

Paul Mescal, 29, shot to fame in the BBC’s Normal People in 2020. He went on to star in acclaimed films Aftersun, for which he was Oscar-nominated, and All of Us Strangers, and he played the lead in the Gladiator sequel. As well as portraying Sir Paul McCartney, the Irish star is about to be seen as another British creative genius, William Shakespeare, in the film adaptation of award-winning novel Hamnet.

Harris Dickinson has become a star thanks to Maleficent, The King’s Man, Triangle of Sadness and Where the Crawdads Sing, before playing Kidman’s love interest in Babygirl. The 28-year-old Brit also received a Bafta TV Award nomination for A Murder at the End of the World, and is among the bookmakers’ favourites to be the next James Bond.

Barry Keoghan bears perhaps the closest resemblance to his Beatle – drummer Ringo. The Irish actor is the oldest of the acting quartet at 32, and is one of the hottest stars in Hollywood, having been nominated for an Oscar for The Banshees of Inisherin before leading the cast of cult hit Saltburn.

Joseph Quinn played Eddie Munson in the fourth season of Netflix’s Stranger Things, was in A Quiet Place: Day One, and appeared alongside Mescal in Gladiator II. Before appearing as guitarist Harrison, the 31-year-old Londoner will be seen as Johnny Storm/Human Torch in The Fantastic Four: First Steps and two Avengers films.

Although several previous movies like Backbeat, Nowhere Boy and I Wanna Hold Your Hand have depicted The Beatles, this is the first time that all four band members and their estates have granted full life story and music rights for a scripted film.

Sir Sam called the films the “first bingeable theatrical experience”, adding: “Frankly, we need big cinematic events to get people out of the house.”

On stage, Dickinson, Mescal, Keoghan and Quinn recited from the band’s song Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band: “It’s wonderful to be here, it’s certainly a thrill, you’re such a lovely audience, we’d like to take you home with us.”

They then gave a Beatles-style synchronised bow.

Formed in 1960, the original band transformed youth culture and changed the course of musical history.

Restlessly imaginative and experimental, they had an uncanny ability to communicate sophisticated musical ideas to a mass audience, on albums including Revolver, Sgt Pepper’s and The White Album.

Despite splitting in 1970, the quartet remain the biggest-selling band of all time.

Only two members survive. John Lennon was murdered in 1980, while Harrison died of cancer in 2001.

In 2023, the surviving members released what was described as the Beatles’ “final” song, Now And Then.

Based on one of Lennon’s old demo tapes, and featuring an archive recording of Harrison’s guitar work, it went to number one and was nominated for awards at the Brits and the Grammys.

This is by no means the first film project to explore the lives of The Beatles – Iain Softley’s Backbeat, released in 1994, dramatised their early career in Hamburg’s clubs, where they cut their musical teeth.

Sam Taylor-Johnson’s Nowhere Boy in 2009 starred her future husband Aaron Taylor-Johnson as Lennon and Thomas Brodie-Sangster as McCartney. It delved into Lennon’s early years and family relationships, and documented him meeting McCartney and Harrison and the band’s origins.

Martin Scorsese made a factual film in 2011 called George Harrison: Living in the Material World, which included contributions from the surviving band members plus archive material.

In 2021, Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson restored more than 50 hours of outtakes from 1970 Beatles documentary Let It Be for Get Back, a three-part film. The epic Disney+ movie, which was nearly seven hours long, shed new light on the relationship between McCartney and Lennon before the band split in 1970.