Introducing Endless Mode: A New Games & Anime Site from Paste
Back in November 2024, Ringo Starr leaked that Barry Keoghan would be playing him in Sam Mendes’ ambitious four-movie Beatles biopic project. Sony Pictures definitely didn’t want that information out there yet, but what are you going to do—this is Ringo himself we’re talking about! It’s the first project for which he, Paul McCartney, and the families of John Lennon and George Harrison have granted their life rights, so he has some stake in the thing, even if he doesn’t quite get how Mendes is going to film four movies simultaneously, as the rocker told The New York Times. “But he’ll do what he’s doing, and I’ll send him peace and love,” Starr said.
Nobody could argue that sentiment. Starr did, however, push back a bit on Mendes when they met in London this past April and went over the script for the Ringo film, the NYT reports. Starr revealed he gave notes on the depiction of his relationship with his first wife, Maureen Starkey Tigrett. Mendes “had a writer—very good writer, great reputation, and he wrote it great, but it had nothing to do with Maureen and I,” Starr shared. “That’s not how we were. I’d say, ‘We would never do that.'”
We know the writers on board for this ambitious project: Jack Throne (Enola Holmes, Adolescence), Jez Butterworth (Ford V Ferrari, Indiana Jones And The Dial Of Destiny), and Peter Straughan (Conclave, Wolf Hall). We don’t, however, know which writer is working on which movie. Straughan once let slip that he was writing the George Harrison script and was “firewalled” from the other writers. Given that only three writers were announced, we’ve previously speculated that maybe Mendes himself is tackling one of the scripts. Based on Starr’s comment and by process of elimination, we can guess that Thorne or Butterworth is writing the Ringo movie. In November Starr said he’d heard Keoghan was “taking drum lessons” to lead the film, which will also feature Paul Mescal as McCartney, Harris Dickinson as Lennon, and Joseph Quinn as Harrison.
