Do The Beatles Deserve Four Movies?
In any case, this is the number of biopics that British filmmaker Sam Mendes will shoot on the legendary rock group, a unique project to give the perspective of each of its members, Sony Pictures Entertainment announced on Tuesday.
According to Sony, this is the first time that Apple Corps (the label founded by the Beatles), the group's surviving members Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, and "
the families of John Lennon and George Harrison, have signed away the rights to story and music for a scripted film
.
“
We want this to be an extraordinarily epic and thrilling cinematic experience: four films, seen from four different points of view, to tell a single story about the most famous band of all time
,” added Pippa Harris, co-founder with Sam Mendes of Neal Street Productions, who will produce the work with Sony.
Also read My Yellow Submarine, by Jon Kalman Stefansson: a life with the Beatles
Sony is planning a release of the biopics for 2027, indicating without further details that the four films about the Liverpool boys will “
cross paths
” in theaters.
In April 1970, six months after the release of the album
Abbey Road
and a month before that of
Let it Be
, the Beatles announced their separation.
The ten years of collaboration between Paul McCartney, John Lennon, George Harrison and Ringo Starr resulted in 14 best-selling albums, nearly a billion records sold and several films.
“Beatlemania” never went away
Last fall, with the help of artificial intelligence, a new track,
Now and Then
, was pieced together and reached the top of the UK charts.
The Beatles have also been the subject of numerous documentaries, such as the series directed by Peter Jackson (
The Beatles: Get Back,
2021) which gives a more positive perspective on their last moments before their separation.
Sam Mendes, already director of
American Beauty
(1999), two James Bond films (
Skyfall
, 2012, and
Specter
, 2015) and
Empire of Light
(2022), said he was “
honored to tell the story of the greatest rock band of all time
.
In recent years, documentaries on streaming platforms and cinema biographies to retrace legendary music stories have multiplied, from
Bohemian Rhapsody
(Queen) to
Elvis
(Elvis Presley) via
Tina
(Tina Turner) or even
Rocketman
(Elton John).