More roles in The Beatles – A Four-Film Cinematic Event have been cast, with David Morrissey, Leanne Best and Bobby Schofield among those to be playing members of the legendary band’s circle.
The Sam Mendes-directed films, produced by Sony Pictures, Neal Street Productions and Apple Corps, are all set for release on April 7, 2028, despite earlier reports that they’d be released at different times. Each film will be told from the perspective of one band member, and it’s also the first-ever film to be granted music rights to the Beatles’ discography.
In June 2024, Harris Dickinson, Paul Mescal and Barry Keoghan were confirmed to be playing The Beatles themselves, with it being revealed over the following months that Dickinson would be John Lennon, Mescal would be Paul McCartney, and Keoghan would be Ringo Starr. Charlie Rowe was originally announced to be one of the quartet, but it was later revealed that Joseph Quinn would be completing the four, playing George Harrison.
Now, Morrissey (The Walking Dead) has been announced to play McCartney’s father Jim, while Line Of Duty actress Best – who Rolling Stone reported is the niece of former Beatles drummer Pete – will play Lennon’s Aunt Mimi. The Covenant actor Schofield is set to be road manager, and schoolfriend of McCartney and Harrison, Neil Aspinall.
Also joining are Daniel Hoffmann-Gill (Sherwood) as roadie Mal Evans, Arthur Darvill (Doctor Who) as press officer Derek Taylor and Adam Pally (The Mindy Project) as music manager Allen Klein. Harry Lloyd (Game Of Thrones) will be playing the band’s producer George Martin, while Happy Valley’s James Norton has been confirmed as manager Brian Epstein, as was reported in October.
They join Dickinson, Mescal, Keoghan and Quinn, as well as the likes of Saoirse Ronan, Anna Sawai, Aimee Lou Wood and Mia McKenna-Bruce, who are playing Linda McCartney, Yoko Ono, Pattie Boyd and Maureen Starkey respectively.
Casting of other characters, including Cynthia Lennon and influential sitar player (and close friend of Harrison) Ravi Shankar, is set to be announced in due course.
Per Variety earlier this year, Mendes’ decision to work on four films comes after years of toying with the idea of a mini-series but ultimately deciding against it, and that “the story was too huge to fit into a single movie.”
Starr, meanwhile, told Mendes to write parts of the script. According to the New York Times, the drummer worked with Mendes for two days to go over the scripts for his film, and “offered extensive notes” to ensure it was an accurate reflection of his life.
Meanwhile, the BBC has just acquired a new Beatles biopic, Hamburg Days, which charts their early days as a band. A synopsis of the series reads: “In the smoke-filled clubs of Hamburg’s St. Pauli’s red-light district, an inexperienced young rock ‘n’ roll band from Liverpool collide with two young artists, Klaus Voormann and Astrid Kirchherr. Together they help spark a transformation that turns a scrappy group of teenagers into the greatest music phenomenon the world has ever known: The Beatles.”
And documentary series The Beatles Anthology was recently rereleased with an extra ninth episode after it was first aired in 1995.
NME gave the rerelease a four-star review, describing it as “a familiar but fab nine-episode deep dive” and adding: “Anthology has a somewhat stitched-together quality, given that the archive clips are interspersed by contemporary footage of Paul, Ringo and George seemingly filmed wherever they happened to be at the time.
“This entire rerelease, though, is more than justified by the genuinely eye-opening final episode, which sees the lads work up ‘Free As A Bird’ and ‘Real Love’, the Lennon demos put out as Beatles tracks alongside the original documentary. There is, Macca hints, a third that they may complete someday.”
