Here's what Sam Mendes' Beatles look like [Updated]

The lovable lads from Liverpool as played by Paul Mescal, Harris Dickinson, Joseph Quinn, and Barry Keoghan.

By Matt Schimkowitz  |  January 29, 2026 | 7:51pm
Photo by: John Russo
Film News The Beatles
Here's what Sam Mendes' Beatles look like [Updated]

Since director Sam Mendes first announced his Beatles Cinematic Universe, a four-film quadrilogy focused on one Beatle at a time, combining into a musical biopic Voltron that people will probably unfavorably compare to that scene from Walk Hard, we’ve spent night after sleepless night wondering what Paul Mescal would look like with a mop top. Wonder no more. Thanks to a couple of postcards shared on Instagram by the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts, a school co-founded by Paul McCartney, we can now rest easy knowing they made Barry Keoghan’s Ringo look like a Dick Tracy character.

The Beatles – A Four-Film Cinematic Event stars Keoghan as Ringo, Mescal as Paul, Joseph Quinn as George Harrison, and Harris Dickinson as John Lennon. Though the school’s Instagram only showed Mescal as McCartney, the leader of the Beatles, the cards were distributed to students, and the rest soon made their way online. Aside from Ringo, whose makeup takes the Bradley Cooper approach to nose prosthetics, the rest of the Fab Four look mostly like people expect, which is to say, a marked step down from Dewey Cox.

The idea behind the movie’s release is a little hard to believe. The Beatles – A Four-Film Cinematic Event presents one film per Beatle, allowing each Beatle’s perspective on the era. The images might hint at which Beatle gets which period, with Mescal’s Paul evoking their Cricket Club origins; John coming straight off the “Revolution” music video; George with his late-’60s locks; and Ringo in his Let It Be days. Actually, three out of four are from their post-Peppers peak—there’s nary a A Hard Day’s Night in the bunch. At least we can confidently say that they cleared the very low bar of John Lennon’s appearance in Danny Boyle’s Yesterday.  According to Variety, all four movies will release on the same day in 2028, which seems unlikely, since no one would go see the Ringo movie, but you never know what people can imagine.

[Update 1/30 9 am]: This morning, Sony Pictures shared the same photos in high-quality:

 
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