Four Beatles Biopics in One Month? Sam Mendes Wants You to Binge the Fab Four

Sam Mendes—Oscar-winning director of American Beauty and the guy responsible for some of Daniel Craig’s best (and worst) Bond moments—has announced an ambitious plan: four separate Beatles biopics, one for each band member, all hitting theaters in April 2028.

Yes, four different movies. In one month. About the same four guys. The lads from Liverpool. Heard of ‘em?

The announcement came as a surprise at CinemaCon, where Mendes brought out his freshly assembled cast: Harris Dickinson as John Lennon, Paul Mescal as Paul McCartney, Barry Keoghan as Ringo Starr, and Joseph Quinn as George Harrison. Mendes is pitching the release strategy as a first-of-its-kind “bingeable theatrical experience,” a phrase that immediately raises eyebrows. Sony, which is bankrolling this massive undertaking, seems to believe that audiences—who already struggle to commit to seeing one movie in theaters—will gleefully line up for four in quick succession.

This is, to put it lightly, a gamble.

The logic behind the move makes a certain kind of sense. The Beatles are the biggest-selling band in history, and interest in their legacy has only been growing in recent years—see Get Back, Now and Then, and the never-ending flood of remasters, documentaries, and deep dives into their mythology. If any band has the cultural weight to support this kind of project, it’s them. And yet, it’s hard not to wonder: Do people really want four Beatles movies at once?

Historically, this kind of ambitious multi-film release has been a dicey proposition. Kevin Costner tried something similar last year with his Horizon films, originally meant to be a rapid-fire theatrical saga—until part one landed with a thud, leaving the rest of the series in limbo. Studios have seen franchise fatigue take down projects that were actually built as franchises (The Divergent Series, Fantastic Beasts), so the idea of rolling out four separate-but-connected biopics in a matter of weeks is, at best, a high-risk maneuver.

There’s also the question of how the stories will be structured. Mendes has hinted that each film will tell its respective Beatle’s personal journey while overlapping with the others in a larger Beatles mythology. But what happens if, say, Lennon is a smash hit while Ringo struggles to sell tickets? Will people really be invested in seeing the whole saga, or will the weaker entries fade into irrelevance?

None of this is to say these movies can’t work. The cast is undeniably strong, and Mendes is a talented filmmaker. The idea of seeing The Beatles’ story told from four distinct perspectives is genuinely intriguing. But the sheer logistics of this plan are wild. We’ve never seen anything like it before. And, as Across the Universe (and maybe Yesterday) taught us, just because people love The Beatles doesn’t mean they’ll automatically love a Beatles movie.

Maybe Sony and Mendes have cracked the code. Maybe this is the future of event cinema. Or maybe, just maybe, they’re setting themselves up for one of the most fascinating moviegoing experiments of the decade. Either way, it’s going to be one hell of a ride.