Beatles Biopics Casts Seemingly Confirmed, With A Different Actor For George Harrison

Earlier this year, the big-deal British film director Sam Mendes announced an utterly bonkers plan. Mendes’ past works include American Beauty, Skyfall, and 1917, and he’s clearly earned a lot of faith from the film industry. He’s going to spend all that capital by building a Beatles cinematic universe. Mendes isn’t just making one Beatles biopic. He’s making four of them — one for each Beatle. A few months ago, there were reports that a quartet of hot young actors had signed on to play the Beatles. Today, there’s news of one change that makes the whole enterprise feel even bigger.

Deadline reports that the 30-year-old British actor Joseph Quinn will play George Harrison in Mendes’ upcoming Beatles movies. Quinn broke out by playing unhinged metalhead Eddie Munson on Stranger Things. He was the male lead in A Quiet Place: Day One earlier this year, and he’ll play Johnny Storm, the Human Torch, in Marvel’s upcoming Fantastic Four film. (The last two attempts at Fantastic Four movies were ass, but the last two Johnny Storms were Chris Evans and Michael B. Jordan, so that’s good company.) Right now, Quinn can be seen onscreen doing beautifully ridiculous things as one of the twin emperors in Gladiator II.

Quinn doesn’t have many scenes with Gladiator II star Paul Mescal, but whenever they’re onscreen together, Quinn pretty much chews Mescal up and spits him out. It’ll be interesting to see if the same things happens in these Beatles movies, since Mescal, as previously reported, will play Paul McCartney. We’ve also got Harris Dickinson as John Lennon and Barry Keoghan as Ringo Starr. There have been leaks around these Beatles films for months, and previous reports claimed that the lesser-known Charlie Rowe would play Harrison. At least in terms of name recognition, Quinn is an upgrade.

The these casting reports are all unconfirmed. The whole idea for these movies seems absurd, but if you’re going to undertake this quest, it probably helps to have a cast like that.