The Beatles’ Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Ringo Starr and John Lennon’s stories will live on in their own biopics – set to be released in 2027.
Sony Pictures and filmmaker Sam Mendes shared that he would be directing all four of the band members’ movies, each one told from their separate point of view.
“I’m honored to be telling the story of the greatest rock band of all time, and excited to challenge the notion of what constitutes a trip to the movies,” Mendes, 58, said in a Tuesday, February 20, press release.
According to the press release, McCartney, 81, Starr, 83, and the families of Lennon and Harrison all signed off on the project.
“We intend this to be a uniquely thrilling, and epic cinematic experience: four films, told from four different perspectives which tell a single story about the most celebrated band of all time,” producer Pippa Harris said in the statement. “To have The Beatles’ and Apple Corps’ blessing to do this is an immense privilege.”
The news of their biopics comes nearly three months after The Beatles released “Now and Then,” a song marketed as the “last” single from the band. Lennon, who was murdered in 1980, recorded a demo of the song in the late 1970s, and AI was able to extract his vocals for this now-complete track.
McCartney shared that finishing the song allowed him to sort of reunite with the late Lennon in a way.
“When we were in the studio, we had John’s voice in our ears,” McCartney told BBC Radio 1, per Billboard in November 2023. “So you could imagine he was just in the next room in a vocal booth or something and we were just working with him again, so it was joyful. It was really lovely, you know, because we hadn’t experienced that for a long time, obviously, and then suddenly here we were working with ol’ Johnny.”
Starr and Harrison, who passed away in 2001 at age 58 after a three-year battle with cancer, had previously attempted to rework the song in the 1990s but couldn’t make it work and recover Lennon’s “lost” voice. However, after Get Back documentary filmmaker Peter Jackson and his team stepped in, they were able to use artificial intelligence technology to extract Lennon’s vocals from the demo.
“It was kind of magical doing it,” McCartney gushed to the outlet at the time.
