Get a load of Sam Mendes’ Beatles in their Abbey Road era
A photo leak from the director’s biopic quadrilogy shows the Faux Four reenacting the famous album cover.
Westminster locals have politely tolerated the ceaseless stream of tourists who have tied up traffic recreating The Beatles’ iconic Abbey Road crossing since the album’s 1969 release. This week, director Sam Mendes, who is currently filming his ambitious four-film Beatles quadrilogy, has presented these put-upon saints with their latest test of forbearance.
Per TMZ, Mendes’s Faux Four—Barry Keoghan’s Ringo Starr, Paul Mescal’s Paul McCartney, Joseph Quinn’s George Harrison, and Harris Dickinson’s John Lennon—were spotted making the iconic crossing, decked out in the Beatles’ equally iconic Abbey Road-era threads.
Much will be made of how the four actors, each of whom has bravely accepted these roles with the understanding that they will be compared unflatteringly to Walk Hard’s Paul Rudd and Jack Black (et al.) from now until at least the films’ release in 2028, look peculiar in the album’s indelibly era-specific style. Some may say Dickinson and Quinn look like they’re in “cosplay,” that Keoghan appears to have “stepped out of Yellow Submarine and straight into a barber’s shop,” or that Mescal’s McCartney looks like the doppelganger the “Paul is dead” conspiracy once theorized was walking among the Beatles on that very cover. And the four young actors seem to be taking such criticisms in stride, as this photo shows, where they appear to be responding in kind:
New photo of Harris Dickinson, Paul Mescal, Joseph Quinn and Barry Keoghan as the Beatles 🎬 #BeatlesBiopics pic.twitter.com/02BSGp8fFu
— Beatles Biopics Updates (@BeatlesBiopics) August 17, 2026
Mendes’s series, The Beatles — A Four-Film Cinematic Event, features a rollout akin to that of the Marvel Cinematic Universe yet is entirely unique in that all four films, each presenting the Beatles’ conquest of pop culture from each bandmate’s perspective, will be released simultaneously—with Keoghan’s solo Ringo film being the installment folks will be either least or most chuffed to buy tickets for. Presumably, the Paul film will finally reveal McCartney’s mindset during his barefoot trek across the street, maybe with some voice-over of him thinking, “Bloody hell, this pavement is positively scorchin’!”
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