First look at the new Beatles biopic with Paul Mescal and Barry Keoghan

The first look at the Fab Four in Sam Mendes’s biographical films about the Beatles has arrived, and it came by mail. Namely, the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts, co-founded by Paul McCartney, sent out postcards yesterday featuring photographs of Paul Mescal, Barry Keoghan, Harris Dickinson, and Joseph Quinn in their respective roles. As previously announced, Mescal plays McCartney, with many already predicting golden statues that unfairly passed him by this year for Hamnet, Keoghan portrays Ringo Starr, Dickinson takes on John Lennon, and Quinn plays George Harrison. The photographs look as though they were taken in the late 1960s at the Cavern Club, as well as in their studio.

When news began circulating this spring about as many as four biographical films centered on one of the greatest bands of all time, The Beatles, online communities, film lovers, and fans were completely blown away. It is not every day that a film studio announces what it calls the biggest “bingeable moment in film history,” akin to the doubled Barbenheimer of the summer of 2023, when nearly everyone we know spent hours and hours in cinemas on an unusual movie marathon.

 

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The core cast also includes Saoirse Ronan as Linda McCartney, who will star alongside Mescal. Paul and Linda McCartney married in 1969, but Linda was never merely “Paul McCartney’s wife.” She was an independent artist whose photographs permanently changed the way we view images of bands. Linda collaborated with Paul as a keyboardist and backing vocalist in his band after the breakup of The Beatles, and she was also an activist. Additional cast members include Mia McKenna-Bruce as Maureen Starkey Tigrett, Anna Sawai as Yoko Ono, Aimee Lou Wood as Pattie Boyd, James Norton as Brian Epstein, and Harry Lloyd as George Martin.

The screenplay is credited to three seasoned writers: Tony Award winner Jez Butterworth, recent Oscar winner for Conclave Peter Straughan, and two-time Emmy winner for the series Adolescence Jack Thorne, although it has not yet been revealed which of them is writing which film. Each of them will tell the story from the perspective of one of the members of the Beatles.

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“I am honored to be able to tell the story of the greatest rock band of all time, and excited to push the boundaries of what it means to go to the movies,” the director said.