At CinemaCon last month, director Sam Mendes officially announced a ridiculously ambitious project that's been in the works for a long time: Four intersecting Beatles biopics, each told from the perspective of a different band member, set to come out within a single month in April 2028. The cast of those biopics -- Harris Dickinson as John Lennon, Paul Mescal as Paul McCartney, Barry Keoghan and Ringo Starr, and Joseph Quinn as George Harrison -- made a surprise appearance at CinemaCon, even though production on the films apparently hasn't begun yet. But things are snapping into place, and now we know which screenwriters are writing these Beatles biopics.
According to Deadline, Jez Butterworth, Peter Straughan, and Jack Thorne have signed on to write the upcoming Beatles biopics. We don't know whether they're each writing individual films or whether they're working together on all four scripts, but the three of them all have a lot of experience. Jez Butterworth is a Tony-winning playwright who's worked with Sam Mendes on the productions The Ferryman and The Hills Of California. Butterworth also co-wrote Mendes' James Bond film Spectre and worked on screenplays like Edge Of Tomorrow, Ford V. Ferrari, and the James Brown biopic Get On Up. Peter Straughan just won an Oscar for writing Conclave, and he also co-wrote Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and adapted the Wolf Hall miniseries. Jack Thorne wrote the Harry Potter And The Cursed Child stage play, the His Dark Materials HBO series, and the Netflix films Enola Holmes and Enola Holmes 2. This year, he co-wrote and co-created the great Netflix miniseries Adolescence.
In other Beatles biopic news, Barry Keoghan was on Kimmel last night, and he talked about how he met with Ringo Starr at Starr's home and how Starr played drums for him. Starr apparently invited Keoghan to play, too, but Keoghan was not willing to play drums in front of Ringo Starr.
The Beatles were also the Final Jeopardy clue in last night's episode of Jeopardy!, and nobody got it. I'm not sure I would've gotten it, either.
Also, there's another Beatles movie in the works, sort of. In 2005, Paul McCartney co-wrote a kids' adventure novel called High In The Clouds. That book is being adapted into an animated film. McCartney himself will produce and write songs, and Himesh Patel, who previously starred in the what-if-there-was-no-Beatles movie Yesterday, will play the lead. According to Screen Daily, a bunch of other actors have joined the High In The Clouds voice cast, including Céline Dion, Lionel Richie, Idris Elba, Jimmy Fallon, and -- hey, look at that -- Ringo Starr.
