After months of uncontrolled voices, the director Sam Mendes has revealed the cast of the new film project linked to the Beatles, four films on John, Paul, George and Ringo who will be released in theaters in April 2028. In the role of Paul McCartney there will be Paul Mescal of Normal PeopleBarry Keoghan Di SALTBURN It will be Ringo Starr, Joseph Quinn was chosen to make George Harrison, who played Eddie Munson in Stranger Things and the human torch in the film of Fantastic four Outgoing. John Lennon's role will be covered by Harris Dickinson, who recently saw in bed with Nicole Kidman in Babygirl.
The new FAB Four showed up at the cinema with Las Vegas, made a style bow and Sullivan and recited some verses of Sgt. Pepper. “It is wonderful to be here,” all the owners of cinemas told those present. “It's a good emotion. You are such a beautiful audience that we would like to take you home with us ».
It is from the first announcement of the project, more than a year ago, that fan of the Beatles are in fibrillation. It is not known much about (this is the official title, a little trivial) The Beatles-A Four-Film Cinematic Event. Over the years we have seen several films about Fab Four, but nobody has ever been equally ambitious. The rest of the cast is not yet known but, PSSS, according to an anonymous source, the triche is Paul.
The four musicians are played by Star of Cinema with a brilliant career, men who only this week spent more time in the gym than the members of the band in their lives have spent. They are all veterans. Barry Keoghan is 32 years old, Ringo's age when the group melted. The youngest, Dickinson, is 28 years old: at that age John created Revolution #9. The slogan of the film is a not exactly Beatlesian effect phrase: “Everyone has its own story, but together they are legendary”. It is Hollywood jargon to say “The Troppermost of the Poppermost”.
From left, Harris Dickinson (John Lennon), Paul Mescal (Paul McCartney), Barry Keoghan (Ringo Starr), Joseph Quinn (George Harrison). Photo: John Russo/Sony Pictures
“They are four very different people,” explained Mendes. “And maybe this will be an opportunity to understand them better.” Nobody knows if the four films will come out simultaneously, how much they will overlap or if they challenge each other at the box office. «As a whole they will tell the story of the greatest band of all time. I felt that the story of the group was too big to be told in a single film and transforming it into a miniseries did not seem right to me ».
Ringo, with his irrepressible naturalness, last year revealed the presence of Keoghan in the cast. “I think it's somewhere to take battery lessons,” he said. “I hope not too many.” Keoghan has already been made fun of for his stunned Liverpool accent in SALTBURN. But always in SALTBURN He has shown that he is an excellent dancer, just as Ringo is at 84 years old. It is a pity that Margaret Qualley cannot do Paul, because it would be perfect; But maybe someone could shoot a film about the Stones in which she plays Mick.
The expectations are to the stars. Hollywood has always had an obsession for the Beatles, also because a film has never been shot on an equally popular or mythical subject. And nobody makes films of this type on the Stones, the Gratteful Dead or Led Zeppelin. The great icons of music, if they are lucky, are the protagonists of one or two respectable biopic, with actors who in practice impersonate a celebrity. But the beatles are different. They have a unique place in dreams all over the world. People keep us seriously. And since the most avid fans of the Beatles like to criticize, there are already roses and Valerie that complain about a film that has not yet been shot.
In order for the director to be Mendes is in itself a mystery, given that so far he has certainly not been known for the musical moments in his films, including American Beauty, Revolutionary Road, Jarhead And a couple of James Bond. It is surprising that he is the one who tackles this challenge: nobody still knows what his point of view on Beatles is, unlike Peter Jackson and Sofia Coppola who are triggered.
In Hollywood, music biopic likes and is one of the paradoxes of our time: when it comes to placulating the insatiable appetite of the audience for the stories of Rockstar, the cinema is much further on of the music industry. Bohemian Rhapsodywhich in 2018 was given as a flop, he surprised everyone by collecting almost a billion dollars and making an Oscar win for Rami Male for Freddy Mercury. A Complete Unknownwith Timothée Chalamet as Bob Dylan, is a brilliant film, with great interpretations of Elle Fanning, Edward Norton, Monica Barbaro, Scoot McNairy and Boyd Holbrook. Chalamet sang Dylan's songs, but it is not yet known if any of the actors written for the beatles movies will try to do it: the challenge is demanding, but after A Complete Unknown It's all different, the bar has risen a lot.
It hasn't been long since the films on rock bands, such as the one on the Def Leppard in which Anthony Michael Hall played Mutt Lange, were night replicas stuff on TV. A bit like for superhero movies, it took some time before Hollywood learned to do them well. Now the era of biopic rock has started, Jeremy Allen White (The Bear) Interprets Bruce Springsteen in a film on the making of Nebraska entitled Deliver me from Nowhere And it has been announced that Zendaya will be Ronnie Spector in a biography directed by Barry Jenkins, while Lizzo will make Sister Rosetta Tharpe.
The real problem in these cases is the casting: it is difficult to make a film about a rock star because no cinema star is quite charismatic for that role. Moreover, if the actors were equipped with a charm of that type, they would make full -time music. “The actors adapt, they transform continuously,” Nick Cave told me about ten years ago. “They can only play the role of monsters. But nobody is monster like a rock star ».
In this case it is particularly difficult, because the actors must compete with the agreement that the four Beatles had on the big screen and, in particular, with their huge comic charge in A Hard Day's Night And Help!. Among the many things, the Beatles were the four funniest people in the world and, in their free time, they were one of the largest comic companies of the big screen of all time, like the Marx brothers or Monty Python. Yellow Submarinein which they are barely seen, is still a delight. Get Back Of Peter Jackson showed that, even in their darkest moments, they were always fun, see Paul who, reflecting, said that “wandering without a destination is very not very stimulating”, John who screams: “It turns me off but blow me mind and floats me upstream!”, George who ironizes: “This is called I'm Got a feeling? » Or Ringo, practically whatever he does.
What is certain is that the surviving beatles have always selected their projects carefully. They never made a mistake, starting from Anthologythe very ambitious documentary of 1995 which kicked off a new golden age for their fandom. They choose partners like Peter Jackson or Giles Martin capable of taking care of details perfectly. The four films seem like a crazy idea, but it didn't seem like it too Rocky Raccoon? As we learned from A Complete Unknownyou can take a musical biography that looks like a mask parody on paper and create something really big, if there is real passion.
When the FAB Four broke out for the first time, the cinematographic celebrity was there at hand, just as it had been for their idol Elvis, who had launched himself in an absurd thread of three bad films a year. But, with a great surprise of Hollywood, and perhaps they too, he was not so tempting compared to the adventures, difficulties or discussions to be faced together as Beatles. John tried to become a serious actor going to Spain to turn As I won the war. “I made some laughs and a few games in Monopoli, but it didn't work,” he said in 1967. “I didn't meet anyone else I liked.”
The set of 'Let it be' on the terraced roof of Savile Row. Photo: Ethan A. Russell/Apple Corps/Disney+
But the film industry has always undergone the charm of the Beatles rather than any other musician. Mendes' new project gives birth to the question: why are there so many films about the Beatles? The first was the TV movie of 1979 The birth of the Beatles who told the beginnings in Liverpool and Hamburg. Ian Hart played John in two excellent films from the 90s: The Hours and Times of 1991, history fictionalized on John and Brian Epstein during a holiday weekend, e Backbeat – Everyone needs love of 1994, a romantic story about the link between John and Stu Sutcliffe. Then there are the biopic Nowhere Boy of 2009, the romantic comedy Yesterday (2019, by Danny Boyle), the Cult musical Across the universe of 2007 by Julie Taylor, the cult comedy 1964 – The Beatles alarm arrives of 1978. And one cannot forget the mockumentary All you need is cash Dedicated to the Rutles, “a musical legend that will live for the duration of the lunch break”. Midas Manthe film about Epstein, Fesco made at the beginning of this year, Brian deserves a redemption.
The flop of the 70s should probably be mentioned Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Bandwith Bee Gees in the role of the band, Peter Frampton who does Billy Shears, Steve Martin as Dr. Maxwell Edison and the participation of Aerosmith, Alice Cooper and others. Transforming that psychedelic concept album into a Hollywood musical with high budget proved to be such a disaster that would have had to give an Oscar to Honorem to the drug dealers on the set.
But my favorite movie about the Beatles is Two of uswho made his debut on VH1 25 years ago, at the beginning of 2000. Director Michael Lindsay-Hogg, who shot Let it be and the video of Hey Judehe created an adorable story about John and Paul and the film holds better and better over the years. This is the premise: it is 1976 and Paul knocks on John's apartment. The two spend a day together talking about their problems and look at the Saturday Night Live Just when Lorne Michaels offers them the opportunity to meet for “3,000 dollars!”. Jared Harris is the best John ever on the big screen, who licks his lips and suck his teeth; Aidan Quinn is the best film paul ever seen. Macca then called him “a great film”, during a radio interview, even if he criticized the scene in which the two protagonists run for Central Park incognito: “Are you crazy, friend?”.
That of the Beatles remains the most loved story all over the world and every year more. Their friend Derek Taylor called them “the largest love story of the twentieth century”, but, as was well seen, the twentieth century was only the beginning. It would hardly have been able to bring out an idea so ridiculous for a film: two anonymous teenagers meet in an anonymous city, grow together, they inspire each other to write songs, feed the genius of the other. Then they find a pair of related spirits in the city and found a rock'n'roll group. Together, they make the world fall in love madly and forever, as he never fell in love with anything else.
“There had to be a way to tell this epic story to a new generation,” Mendes in Las Vegas said. “I can assure you that there is still a lot to investigate.” But nobody has ever needed to sell the Beatles to a new generation, because their music and their history refuse to vanish among the mists of the past. Those guys have a bond that anyone can perceive in music, and that is why they have come to symbolize the idea of friendship itself (the perfect example of history like “us against the whole world”), as well as that of friendship that ends (a separation manual case). The Beatles could be, as Mendes says, “too big to be told” in a cinematographic adaptation. But that's why, now and always, theirs is too irresistible a story because Hollywood makes her run away.
From Rolling Stone Us.
