Paul Mescal worried Gladiator II would make him too famous – with a role as another Paul in his calendar, he ain’t seen nothing yet… You’ve stumbled across the Film Stories Newsletter! To get this sort of thing in your inbox every Friday, subscribe here. Hello! We’ve got a bit over two years to wait for ... Will the Beatles biopics make four careers – or break them?
Paul Mescal worried Gladiator II would make him too famous – with a role as another Paul in his calendar, he ain’t seen nothing yet…
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We’ve got a bit over two years to wait for the nattily-named The Beatles – A Four-Film Cinematic Event, but production is well underway. But with a cast of Britain and Ireland’s best up-and-comers, could its stars come to regret the biggest films of their lives? All that below (oh, and the Oscar nominations happened).
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Beatlemania 2.0?
An indie darling, a softboi and a Joker walk into a bar. Joseph Quinn, tired from repeatedly setting fire to himself on the set of Avengers: Doomsday, is already there. The quartet are taking a break from a marathon filming schedule; unspecified decades of pre-, post- and mid-Beatles history told over at least eight hours of screentime and released – in Hollywood’s latest and grandest experiment in pissing about with cinema distribution – on the same day. It’s enough to make anyone reach for a tipple.
Out of everyone involved in Sam Mendes’ quadrilogy, its stars have the clearest reasons to be worried. Though not arriving in cinemas until 2028, the project has already generated the kind of internet gossip usually reserved for the Bond franchise its director once dabbled in. Even the main cast was a who’s-who of “the-sort-of-person-people-usually-fancast-as-007-but-are-really-too-famous-for-all-that”.
Because a podium the size of this one can just as easily turn into a gallows for four lads already on the cusp of becoming household names. All are probably just-about famous enough for less well-meaning folks than I to be watching their fab four debut with arms crossed and knives unsheathed. Maybe this is why Bond has tended to stick to up-and-comers – if the Beatles “Four Film Cinematic Event” fails, you can be sure its stars will be ones taking the fall.
There’s a growing sense that Paul Mescal (McCartney), Barry Keoghan (Starr), Harris Dickinson (Lennon) and Quinn (George Harrison) understand the scale of their folly better than most. Probably the most well-known of the four post-Gladiator II and Hamnet, Mescal recently told The Guardian he wants to slow down a bit: “I hope nobody gets to see me until 2028 when I’m doing the Beatles. People will get a break from me and I’ll get a break from them.”
The Aftersun and Normal People star is right to be worried; in a fractured media landscape, the line between irrelevance and overexposure is basically impossible to walk. Put out enough stuff to reach every different demographic and it’s almost certain an algorithm somewhere will have shown some of them almost nothing else. Enter his co-star, Keoghan, as an example, burned by a very busy 2022/3.
Memorable turns in Banshees of Inisherin, Saltburn and The Batman combined with a tabloid-catnip private life (he went out with Sabrina Carpenter for a bit) and a few underwear adverts to put his face in front of every pair of peepers on the planet. It felt like the Dublin lad was everywhere; for mainstream audiences not totally clued-in on his The Killing Of A Sacred Deer/The Green Knight genre of “weird little guy” acting, it’s not hard to see how fatigue might have begun to set in.
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Based on his decisions over the last couple of years, Keoghan seems to have been aware his face was appearing on a few too many Instagram feeds. Since 2024, the star’s broadly sought out indie pictures and the odd music video; supporting roles in this year’s proper thriller (we’re allowed exactly one) Crime 101 and the Peaky Blinders movie see him edging back into the limelight before Beatlemania 2.0 and a rumoured part in The Batman Part II put him back on magazine covers. Still, his fate is probably one most of his cohort would rather avoid, even if it does paint a vivid portrait of life as an almost-A-lister in the social media age.
At the opposite end of the spectrum sits Harris Dickinson. Already the most BFI-friendly of the group with no four-quadrant hits (but plenty of acclaim) to his name, he was widely considered a favourite for the 007 role before he was cast as another violent chauvinist altogether.
Apart from the chance to neck a few vodka martinis, though, Dickinson probably has the least to lose. After a much-lauded directorial debut (Urchin) last year, his image as a Sight & Sound bad boy won’t be dented one jot by a blockbusting misstep. If the Beatles works out, though, this could give him a real shot at hitting the mainstream heights he hasn’t quite broken into yet.
Quinn has the hardest job of the four, having the misfortune of starring in back-to-back solid (but not spectacular) blockbusters: A Quiet Place Day One, Gladiator II and Fantastic Four: First Steps haven’t made him a laughing stock, but they’ve not seen him lauded with praise either. A career largely defined by solid performances in okay blockbusters (and Stranger Things) means a bad Beatles movie could sink his star before it really peeps over the horizon. And unless his George Harrison is good enough to grab an Oscar nom, it’s not really clear what he gets out of the whole enterprise; more proof he can work in a corporate machine? Hooray?
Only one thing in this whole business is certain; 2028 is about to turn this fab four into some of the most famous faces on the planet. But their careers, let alone their personal lives, might wish it hadn’t…
The Beatles – A Four-Film Cinematic Event arrives in cinemas 7th April 2028.
