“We’re on day 180 of the shoot today,” Pippa Harris, the producer behind Sam Mendes’ The Beatles – A Four Film Cinematic Event, said with a pointed smile this afternoon during a career Q&A at the London Film Festival.
“I stepped away for this hour and am going back afterwards. It is a big endeavour,” Harris continued before politely swerving specific questions about the films. Harris did, however, speak about the unique release strategy behind the films. All four of Mendes’ Beatles films will be released in cinemas in April 2028 in what Mendes described at CinemaCon 2025 as the first “bingeable moment in cinema.”
“At the moment, the films will come out in 2028, and we want people to be able to experience them in the cinema at the same time, during the same period,” Harris told the audience at the LFF.
“Now that doesn’t necessarily mean we’re thinking that people will go and see all four films on the same day. But within the same month, you might see one a week, or you might see one film one weekend and another the next. However you do it, we hope that people will see all four films.”
The Beatles – A Four Film Cinematic Event stars Joseph Quinn as George Harrison, Paul Mescal as Paul McCartney, Barry Keoghan as Ringo Starr, and Harris Dickinson as John Lennon. The films are essentially four separate theatrical biopic films about the iconic British quartet.
“They stand alone as individual stories of each of those four men,” Harris said of the four films, “but they have a cumulative power, which I think is greater than the sum of the parts.”
Harris added: “They are the greatest band in history, and we’re trying to do our best to do them justice. So hence the four films. I don’t think there’s probably another band that you could legitimately say you wanted to see four films about.”
Mendes is directing from scripts written by Jez Butterworth, Peter Straughan and Jack Thorne. A collaboration between Sony Pictures Entertainment and Mendes’ Neal Street Productions, the films are being produced by Mendes, Harris and Julie Pastor of Neal Street, as well as Alexandra Derbyshire, in association with Apple Corps for Sony Pictures. This marks the first time that The Beatles and Apple Corps Ltd. have authorized the use of the band members’ life stories and music in scripted films.
The LFF runs until October 18.