Sony and Oscar-winning filmmaker Sam Mendes’ ambitious plans to make four separate theatrical films, one on each of the members of The Beatles, certainly turned heads when it was announced last week.
Mendes will direct all four films. For the first time ever, Apple Corps. and The Beatles have granted full life story and music rights for a scripted film. However, we wondering, how exactly would these films get rolled out theatrically? We haven’t really seen something like this before.
Sony chief Tom Rothman has clarified a few of our questions via an interview with THR. He says Mendes is eyeing a mid-2025 shoot in the UK and, yes, all four films will be released in 2027. My best guess is that we get each of them rolled out in the winter, spring, summer and fall. Makes sense, no?
“You have to match the boldness of the idea with a bold release strategy,” Rothman tells THR about the project. “There hasn’t been an enterprise like this before, and you can’t think about it in traditional releasing terms.”
The reason why this project is such a big deal is due to the lack of Beatles-centered films we’ve had so far. Danny Boyle’s “Yesterday” and Julie Taymor’s “Across the Universe” used the Fab Four’s music but weren’t biographical projects. Whereas indies like 1994’s “Backbeat,” 2009’s “Nowhere Boy” focused on the band’s pre-fame days.
What a wild vision from Rothman and Mendes. These are set to be interconnected stories, one from each band member’s point of view. Writers are close to being signed on. No cast has been announced, but there have been whispers about casting calls for non-stars.
Mendes and Sony will tackle Paul McCartney, John Lennon, George Harrison and Ringo Starr’s coming of age when they became global stars, the breakup and their solo recording careers. It’s as vast and ambitious as big studio films get.
It also remains to be seen if Mendes is the right man for the job. Variety’s Owen Gleiberman has already questioned whether the filmmaker can actually do justice to The Beatles.
All four will be made by the director of “American Beauty,” “Road to Perdition,” “Revolutionary Road,” “1917,” “Empire of Light,” and several other films that I’m far from alone in not being all that crazy about. I’m not out to dump on Mendes; he’s unquestionably a talented filmmaker. “American Beauty” was stunningly crafted (though I thought its script was thin). And though I belong to a very small minority in not being a major fan of “Skyfall,” the first of two Bond movies that Mendes directed (almost no one likes “Spectre,” his follow-up), I recognize that it’s a beloved entry in the 007 canon.
Gleiberman goes on to add that, yes, Mendes is good with actors, and there’s no denying that he’s got chops, but “in the 24 years since he swept the Oscars with “American Beauty,” he has not exactly lived up to the promise of that awards night. There’s something earnest and sodden and too thematically self-aware about Mendes’s filmmaking”.
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