Sony Explores Unconventional Release and Box Office Strategy for Beatles Biopics
Sony Pictures is mulling a few different novel release strategies for director Sam Mendes’ The Beatles — A Four-Film Cinematic Event, from releasing all four films on the same day in April 2028 to lumping the box office returns of all four films together so that no one Beatle biopic can be deemed more successful than the other.
According to sources for The Hollywood Reporter, the studio and Mendes “have long mulled dropping all four movies the same day. In addition, Mendes and the studio have been pondering a highly unique reporting structure for the films’ box office receipts. Instead of releasing each film’s tally individually, the studio has been considering lumping the returns of all four movies together.”
Sony may also offer filmgoers a four-pack of tickets to the entire quartet of films, but that would require theater chains to figure out how exactly to sell that to filmgoers.
THR adds: “Assuming all four movies do indeed drop the same week, sources also say the plan is to market the films as not having a particular order — that there will be no ‘right’ order in which to watch the films.”
What Sony hopes to avoid is a scenario where audiences are seen to prefer any one member of the Fab Four over the other, where maybe most filmgoers go to see the John Lennon or Paul McCartney movie and wait for streaming to watch the George Harrison or Ringo Starr ones.
Pippa Harris, one of the films’ producers, recently spoke at the BFI London Film Festival’s Industry Forum where she said the filmmakers and studio “want people to be able to experience them in the cinema at the same time, during the same period. … Now that doesn’t necessarily mean we’re thinking that people will go and see all four films on the same day. But within the same month, you might see one a week, or you might see one film one weekend and another the next.”
The cast includes Harris Dickinson as John Lennon, Paul Mescal as Paul McCartney, Joseph Quinn as George Harrison, and Barry Keoghan as Ringo Starr.
Saoirse Ronan plays Linda McCartney, Anna Sawai plays Yoko Ono, Aimee Lou Wood plays Pattie Boyd, Mia McKenna-Bruce plays Maureen Starkey, David Morrissey plays Paul McCartney’s father Jim McCartney, Leanne Best plays John Lennon’s Aunt Mimi, James Norton plays their manager Brian Epstein, Harry Lloyd plays music producer George Martin, Bobby Schofield plays road manager and confidant Neil Aspinall, Daniel Hoffman-Gill plays roadie Mal Evans, Arthur Darvill plays press officer Derek Taylor, and Adam Pally plays music manager Allen Klein.