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- By Mark Savage and Steven McIntosh
- entertainment reporters
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Apple Corps said the films would “explore the unique story of each Beatle.”
Director Sir Sam Mendes will make four different films about the Beatles, one from the perspective of each band member.
Sir Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr and the families of John Lennon and George Harrison have granted permissions and music rights for all four films.
The Oscar-winning director said he was “honored to tell the story of the greatest rock band of all time.”
He added that he was “excited to challenge the notion of what constitutes a trip to the movies.”
The films, made by Sony Pictures and Sir Sam’s Neal Street Productions, will be released in theaters in 2027.
It’s unclear whether the four films will be released at the same time or have a staggered release, but Sony said they will have an “innovative release cadence” that will be announced at a later date.
The project marks the first time The Beatles and their company Apple Corps have awarded full music and life story rights to a scripted film, according to a statement.
Sir Sam has previously directed films such as 1917, American Beauty, Revolutionary Road, Empire of Light and two James Bond films: Skyfall and Specter.
The Beatles are considered the greatest British band of all time thanks to a series of classic albums such as Rubber Soul, Revolver, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and Abbey Road.
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Sir Sam Mendes (left) recently directed Empire of Light, starring Olivia Colman and Toby Jones.
His best-known hits include Yesterday, Hey Jude, A Hard Day’s Night, Eight Days a Week, Let It Be, Come Together, Here Comes The Sun, Twist and Shout, Love Me Do and Help!
Most of its songs were written by Lennon and McCartney. It was often said that Harrison felt frustrated because his bandmates did not give equal weight to his own compositions.
Last year, the Beatles released what was described as their “last song.” Titled Now and Then, the opening bars were written by John Lennon in 1978, but could not be completed until software advances allowed the remaining band members to extract their vocals from a demo cassette.
The song topped the UK singles chart in November, making the Beatles the group with the longest gap between their first and last number one hits.
Apple Corps said the four new films would “explore each Beatle’s unique story and bring them together in a suitably captivating and innovative way.”
Producer Dame Pippa Harris said: “We intend for this to be an exceptionally exciting and epic cinematic experience… To have the blessing of The Beatles and Apple Corps to make this is an immense privilege.”
The Beatles are no strangers to the big screen, having starred in several of their own films in the 1960s, from the madcap comedy of A Hard Day’s Night to the surreal psychedelia of Yellow Submarine.
After the breakup, they inspired dozens of full-length tributes, from Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (a disastrously raucous musical starring the Bee Gees) to the moving coming-of-age story I Wanna Hold Your Hand.
The latter, which followed a group of teenagers trying to access the Beatles’ seminal performance on Ed Sullivan’s television show, marked the directorial debut of Back to the Future’s Robert Zemeckis. And he’s not the only big-name director to be seduced by the lure of the Fab Four.
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The Beatles are considered the best British band of all time.
Peter Jackson’s epic four-part documentary Get Back reused footage filmed during the recording of the band’s final album; Martin Scorcese put together a revealing documentary about the “quiet Beatle” George Harrison in 2011; while Sam Taylor-Johnson dramatized John Lennon’s early life in the austere but compelling Nowhere Boy.
Danny Boyle’s Yesterday imagined a world where everyone forgets about the Beatles, except for one struggling musician who takes credit for all their songs (hilarity ensues).
And Julie Taymor’s Across The Universe used the band’s music as the backdrop for a ’60s romantic comedy that featured Bono with a very peculiar mustache singing I Am The Walrus. It was very, very bad.
Perhaps the best of all was 1994’s Backbeat, an independent film directed by Iain Softley that told the story of the Beatles’ pre-fame days in Hamburg. By focusing heavily on the story of the band’s original bassist, Stuart Sutcliffe, he freed himself from the colossal cultural baggage of the band’s later output.
Coincidentally, Backbeat was turned into a novel by music journalist Alan Clayson, who later published a four-volume box set, telling the story of the Beatles from the perspective of each individual member of the band. Sounds familiar?
Still, Clayson’s unauthorized biographies, with their stories of infidelity and drug use, are unlikely to be the starting point for Mendes’ films, which have been approved by the all-powerful Beatles Corporation.
But if there’s any lesson from those books, it’s that the George Harrison and Ringo Starr volumes are much more compelling, simply because we’re less familiar with the story’s beats.
Perhaps the biggest question is: can Mendes fix it so that each of his Beatles movies sync up when playing simultaneously, like Pink Floyd’s The Wizard of Oz and Dark of the Moon?
Because that would really be worth traveling for. Or four.
Correction: An earlier version of this story attributed the Backbeat story to Alan Clayson. The film was written by Iain Softley, Michael Thomas and Stephen Ward. Clayson’s book was a novelization of the screenplay.